Death of a Blueberry Tart

by Lee Hollis

  Hayley shoved the last fried clam from her roll into her mouth and chewed quickly. “I know, there was a twenty percent chance of rain, but there isn’t a cloud in the sky.”

  “Nope, not one,” Bruce said, eyes up.

  Hayley could not help herself. She glanced over at just the moment when Carl slipped his tongue into Sheila’s mouth. She quickly averted her eyes over toward Bruce. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

  “Yes, please!” Bruce begged.

  They both popped up to their feet.

  Hayley’s eyes were fixed on the grass underneath them. “We’ll be back in a little while.”

  She didn’t expect her mother to answer, but she still waited a few seconds anyway. Upon hearing a slurp, she decided that was as good an answer as she was going to get, and so she and Bruce hurried off, crossing the road to Bear Brook Pond with a sweeping view of Champlain Mountain steeply above.

  Once they were a safe distance away, Bruce took Hayley’s hand and they strolled along in silence, enjoying the restful sights and sounds of nature.

  Finally, Bruce squeezed Hayley’s hand and spoke. “I’d really like to kiss you right now but I’m afraid I might have a flashback to what I saw back there at the picnic table.”

  Hayley giggled. “I guess we should be grateful that my mother is happy.”

  “There is happy and then there is happy! And that is way too much happy for me!”

  “Are you traumatized by public displays of affection?”

  “No, I’m traumatized by having to watch your mother swap spit with the man who used to coach my Little League baseball team. You just can’t unsee something like that, Hayley.”

  “I don’t know, I think it was kind of cute. And if having a new man in her life distracts her from getting into any more trouble, I’m all for it.”

  “Just promise me if they get married, we won’t have to go on a joint honeymoon cruise to the Bahamas.”

  “Well, we’re not going anytime soon. I went on the website and found out the two-hundred-dollar change fee is only valid until the start of the cruise. We missed the deadlines, so now the tickets are totally nonrefundable, which means we have to start our honeymoon fund all over again.”

  “Maybe we can go on our tenth anniversary.” Bruce sighed.

  Hayley and Bruce walked a bit farther, and the trail opened up into a clearing near Dorr Mountain. Hayley glanced down to see blueberry bushes lined up along the way. She bent down, plucked one berry and tossed it in her mouth. After chewing and swallowing, she opened her mouth to show Bruce her purplish-gray tongue.

  “The blueberries are really ripening now. They’re so sweet and juicy,” Hayley said, picking another one and handing it to Bruce, who threw it in the air and tried catching it with his mouth as it came down, but he missed.

  Hayley picked one up and tried the same thing. She managed to catch hers and swallow it.

  “You trying to show me up?” Bruce asked.

  “No, I’m just better at it than you.”

  Bruce feigned offense. He picked another blueberry off the bush and tried again.

  And he missed again.

  Hayley laughed. “No wonder you got cut from the football team in high school. You can’t even catch a blueberry.”

  “I got cut because I was failing half my classes. I was an awesome running back. Here, I’ll prove it to you. Give me a head start and then you throw the blueberry and I’ll show you just how good I can be.”

  “This is such an exercise in humiliation,” Hayley said, shaking her head.

  Bruce began jogging backward into the open clearing that was full of blueberry bushes, his mouth wide open.

  Hayley knew he wouldn’t stop until he caught one, so she picked one more blueberry and threw it as hard as she could at him.

  It flew right at him, and it looked as if he was poised to finally catch it when suddenly he went down, flat on his back.

  Hayley gasped. “Bruce, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I just tripped.”

  “Anything broken?”

  “Just my spirit.”

  Hayley ran toward him, but didn’t see him at first. “Where are you?”

  He raised an arm in the air.

  As she got closer to him, she suddenly heard him yell, “Oh my God!”

  “Bruce, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I just saw what I tripped over . . . I thought it was a log or something . . .”

  As Hayley finally reached Bruce, she followed his stunned gaze to the ground, where a body was face-down in a blueberry patch.

  Bruce gingerly reached down and turned the body over enough to see that it was a woman, her white summer blouse stained purple by squashed blueberries.

  Hayley threw a hand to her mouth. “It’s Regina Knoxville!”

  Island Food & Spirits BY HAYLEY POWELL

  Growing up on Mount Desert Island on the Down East coast of Maine, that old phrase, “there are plenty of fish in the sea” usually meant a good haul for the local fishermen who went out every day to catch the lobsters and crabs that the local restaurants served to the millions of tourists who descended upon our small island during the busy tourist season.

  However, for Liddy Crawford’s mother, Celeste, the saying “plenty of fish in the sea” had nothing to do with shellfish. In her mind, it squarely meant something else entirely—the men who were available to marry her one-and-only, precious daughter. And as far as Celeste was concerned, once Liddy had graduated from college and moved back home to follow in her mother’s footsteps, hoping to become a successful Realtor, the island’s dating pool had sadly dried up!

  In Celeste’s eyes, no boy had ever been good enough for her darling Liddy. She attributed this to the fact that Liddy’s choices had been impulsive and wrong-headed, and none of the boys she had brought home during high school and college even came close to deserving her stamp of approval. As for Liddy, she considered her mother’s ideas about having “a man to take care of you” antiquated and outdated, and she was having none of it. She could take care of herself, and set out to prove it by making the goal to sell more houses in one year than her mother! That would keep her so busy she wouldn’t have time to worry about any kind of love life!

  Unfortunately, Celeste had other plans, and she was determined to find someone for her daughter, who she felt “wasn’t getting any younger.” When Liddy reminded her that she was only twenty-two, her mother quipped, “There’s another phrase besides ‘plenty of fish in the sea,’ and that’s ‘the early bird gets the worm.’”

  There was plenty of eye-rolling over that one.

  So as Liddy worked tirelessly to build her career, Celeste was hard at work playing matchmaker to find Mr. Right. First there was a young, eager salesman at Darling’s Auto Mall in Ellsworth who could only talk about himself, and when he wasn’t talking about himself, he talked about his work. The few minutes he did focus on Liddy were spent trying to convince her to buy a new Ford Mustang convertible just off the assembly line, which he could get for her for a good price. Since Liddy also preferred talking about herself most of the time, it was not a good match at all. Then there was the young scientist from the Jackson Laboratory biomedical research facility, and no pun intended, there was literally zero chemistry. An up-and-coming nature photographer seemed promising, but Celeste had been misinformed about the kind of pictures he took. She thought nature meant trees and frogs and ponds, but his portfolio was actually “au naturel” and his models posed nude. Liddy politely declined his request for a photo session after dessert.

  Finally, Liddy put her foot down and after a lot of yelling, begging, and pleading, her mother grudgingly agreed to finally stay out of Liddy’s dating life. Well, as it happened, a couple of weeks later, when Liddy popped into the new florist shop in town to pick up fresh bouquets of flowers for an open house that she was helping her mother stage, she met the new owner, who introduced himself as Barry. Barry was in his late twenties, movie-star handsome in a Brad
Pitt sort of way, and he was also funny and he had Liddy laughing while he gathered up her order. By the time she left his shop, Liddy was in love.

  Liddy and Barry became inseparable, and Celeste could not have been happier that her only daughter had finally, after much searching, found the love of her life. The icing on the cake was that he owned his own business, which was definitely a major plus in her book!

  Liddy was so happy that she actually invited her mother out to dinner one evening with her and Barry at the Chart Room in Hulls Cove. However, Barry seemed uncharacteristically distant at the table. Liddy attributed it to nerves. Her mother seemed totally oblivious and was enjoying herself immensely as they ordered their second round of blueberry cosmos. Barry answered all of Celeste’s probing questions about his family. At some point, Liddy excused herself to go to the ladies’ room when Celeste pointed out that her nose was shiny. Upon her return, Liddy saw her mother and Barry huddling close, in deep conversation, and for a brief moment, she let herself imagine that Barry might be asking her mother’s permission to propose marriage. But as she got closer, she heard Barry say insistently to her mother, “I can’t keep your money!” To which her mother replied, “A deal is a deal!”

  When they finally noticed Liddy had returned and overheard them, Barry’s face had guilt written all over it. Then he jumped up from the table, mumbling “I’m sorry,” and ran right out of the restaurant. Liddy stared after him, and then turned to her mother and yelled, “Mother, what did you do?”

  It took some coaxing, but Celeste finally admitted that she had met Barry before and thought he and Liddy would be a good match, and so she offered him money to take Liddy out on a date. Barry had accepted, justifying it as a business deal in his mind, since he could use the extra cash for more inventory at his fledgling flower shop. He never dreamed he would even like Liddy, nor did he ever imagine that he might even fall in love with her. Barry had been trying to return Celeste’s money. He wanted to confess everything to Liddy, hoping she would take it with a sense of humor. Unfortunately, Liddy did not see it that way at all.

  Liddy was furious with her mother and she moved out of Celeste’s house and didn’t speak to her for a few months. But eventually she realized that her mother only had her best interests at heart, and forgave her, but not before making her promise to never meddle in Liddy’s love life ever again. Celeste readily agreed, but broke the promise a week later when she sold a summer cottage to a wealthy single banker from New York.

  As for poor Barry, he had called Liddy for a month straight after that ill-fated dinner, but she refused to answer. She just couldn’t get past the fact that her mother had paid a man to date her. She was utterly humiliated.

  Small towns are funny though, and eventually Liddy and Barry kept running into each other at the grocery store, at after-hour work events, and occasionally at mutual friends’ parties. They did try dating again, but in the long run they were not meant to be. However, on a happy note, they are the best of friends still to this day.

  Of course, my favorite part of that story is the mention of a blueberry cosmo, one of my all-time favorite cocktails, and believe me, after you try one you too will be hooked.

  BLUEBERRY COSMO

  INGREDIENTS

  4 ounces blueberry juice

  1 ounce lime juice

  2 ounces Cointreau

  6 ounces vodka

  Combine all your ingredients with ice in a shaker and shake until chilled.

  Rim a martini glass with the lime juice.

  Strain the chilled mixture into the glass and garnish with a lime slice and enjoy.

  BLUEBERRY COBBLER

  INGREDIENTS

  3 cups fresh blueberries

  3 tablespoons sugar

  ⅓ cup orange juice

  ⅔ cup all-purpose flour

  ½ teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon salt

  ½ cup room temperature butter

  ½ cup sugar

  1 egg

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.

  In an 8-inch baking dish mix your blueberries, three tablespoons sugar, and orange juice together and set aside. In a bowl mix your flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside.

  In a stand mixer or bowl with hand mixer, cream the butter and ½ cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Gradually add the flour mixture until just combined. Drop the batter by tablespoonfuls over the blueberry mixture.

  Try to cover as much of the blueberries as you can.

  Bake in preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, until the topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbly.

  Chapter 26

  After Bruce checked Regina’s pulse and found none, Hayley scooped out her cell phone and called 911, reporting what they had found. Bruce jogged up to the main road to wait for the police to arrive while Hayley stayed with the body.

  Chief Alvarez raced to the scene as fast as he could after receiving the call, but since they were deep inside Acadia National Park in a remote area, Bruce did not spot the flashing blue lights of the chief’s squad car approaching for a tense and uncomfortable twenty-five minutes. Within that time, Hayley had enough time to examine the body without touching it.

  She had first noticed that there were red splotchy marks all over Regina’s face, bare arms, and legs. Her throat appeared to be swollen along with her tongue, which stuck out of her mouth. After swatting away a few bees that kept buzzing around and irritating her, Hayley noticed a hive nearby. It was lodged in one of the blueberry bushes close to Regina’s body. There was a wicker basket upended and blueberries were spread around all over the dirt and grass. Hayley quickly determined that Regina had been out picking blueberries when she died. The hive was also an important clue because the red marks and swollen neck and tongue possibly indicated symptoms of an allergic reaction to bee stings.

  What Hayley found odd was how the hive was positioned. She didn’t get too close, fearing she might surprise the bees still inside and get attacked herself, but it seemed so out of place. The hive was tilted to the right, and just resting in the bush, not hanging anywhere, as if someone had deliberately placed it there.

  The pounding footsteps of her husband, Sergio, and a couple of his officers snapped her out of her thoughts and she turned to see the cavalry finally arriving on the scene. Hayley didn’t have to give her brother-in-law the rundown of what she had noticed because he was a smart enough investigator to deduce all of what she had discovered on his own. Instead, she stepped back with Bruce as the cops took over. She did, however, turn to Bruce, who was sweating from the hot sun and clearly upset over having stumbled over Regina Knoxville’s dead body.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  Bruce nodded. “Just kind of a shock to find her out here like that. I told you dead bodies freak me out!”

  Hayley rubbed his back with her hand to comfort him. “I know. Poor Regina . . .”

  “Sergio wants us to stick around for a few minutes so he can ask us some questions once he’s done looking around,” Bruce said.

  “Of course,” Hayley said, having no intention of leaving just yet anyway. She wanted to make sure that she and the police were both on the same page.

  A bee buzzed past them and over to the hive lodged in the blueberry patch. Then another. Hayley turned to see Bruce waving his hand in front of his face as a third one danced around his head before flying away and over to the hive. Hayley touched Bruce’s arm. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just over there,” Hayley said, not pointing in any particular direction. She watched as one bee after another whizzed through the air toward the hive. She set off due west, in the direction from which the bees seemed to be coming. She hadn’t gotten very far, maybe fifty yards, when she noticed a balsam fir tree with hundreds of bees hovering around one of the branches as groups of them, flying in ever increasing figure eights, buzzed off toward the
honeycomb hive lodged in the blueberry patch. Hayley suddenly knew exactly what had happened.

  When she dashed back to Bruce, he was already engaged in a deep discussion with Sergio, recounting how he and Hayley had first encountered the body.

  “She was murdered!” Hayley shouted.

  Bruce and Sergio stopped talking and turned toward her, both staring at her blankly.

  “What?” Sergio asked.

  “Regina! Somebody wanted her dead!”

  Sergio tried not to come off as patronizing and so he pretended to be taking Hayley seriously. “We may come to that conclusion when we’re done investigating, but I have to be honest, Hayley, right now it looks like Regina bumped into a beehive and got a hell of a lot of stings all over her body—”

  “Yes, I know, and from the flushing and swelling, it’s quite possible Regina was allergic to bees, but I think somebody already knew that!”

  “How so?”

  “Because that beehive is manmade. Most wild bees in nature colonize in hollowed-out trees or in rock cavities to protect themselves from predators. That hive was hung on a tree branch about fifty yards down the trail. But somebody moved it and placed it in that blueberry patch.”

  “How do you know that?” Sergio asked, curious.

  “Because I did a high school science project on beehives and I know for a fact that when a hive is moved, the returning bees will hover near its original location. Then they will start looking for their lost hive by flying in figure eights. They use their sense of smell to find where the hive is. Look, you can see the bees coming toward their nest.”

  Sergio watched the bees arriving and knew there was no arguing with her.

  She was right.

  Bruce arched an eyebrow, impressed with his wife’s knowledge of the bee kingdom.