by Kate Bell
Detective Blanchard sauntered back, glancing over his shoulder at Ellen as she headed out the hall door. He turned back toward Lucy and I after Ellen had exited the building. “That one’s a peach,” he said.
“Oh, you have no idea!” Lucy said. “Diana fired her last month for stealing from the till!”
“And she didn’t show even a little bit of sorrow when she found out Diana was dead!” I added. I thought I would point that out, just in case it turned out that Diana hadn’t died of natural causes.
“No, she didn’t seem at all distressed about it, that’s for sure,” he said. “The coroner should be here any minute. He’ll have to determine if foul play was involved. It’s good to know she got fired, in case it turns out it wasn’t natural causes.”
“Alec, how long do you think all this will take?” I asked and glanced at the big clock on the wall. It was after two o’clock and the bazaar started at seven.
“It’s hard to say. Brant Olney will have to examine the body and take pictures and take a look around at the place. You know, just in case.”
“But we have to have the bazaar,” I almost whined. “We’re raising money for the community Thanksgiving meal as well money to buy winter coats for less fortunate children. Practically the whole community will be showing up here in just a few hours.” We had been planning this event for months. It was a yearly event and without it, many wouldn’t have a Thanksgiving meal. Maine winters were brutal, and the children needed the coats.
Alec looked at me and sized me up. “I understand. I’ll try to move him out of here as fast as I can.”
The door swung open and Layla Rogers, owner of Pets, Inc., entered with decorations for her booth. She smiled at all of us, then paused a moment, looking us up and down. Then she continued across the room to her booth.
“We’re going to have to do something about keeping people out of here until we’re done,” Alec said, looking at Yancey and George. Without a word, the two of them headed over to Layla and after a few words, ushered her out of the building.
For something to do, I moved the boxes of candy apples to the other side of my table. I had crafted each apple by hand, dipping each one in buttery caramel, and adding a Jack O’ Lantern face. The caramel coating was a special recipe I had created, and they were the best candy apples I had ever tasted, if I did say so myself.
My pumpkin hand pies came complete with Jack O’ Lantern faces. They were the cutest things I have ever made. I had an assortment of pies that I needed to run home for, as well. I had baked Pumpkin, blackberry, cherry, coconut cream, chocolate cream and raisin sour cream. I had left them cooling on my kitchen counter top and I was anxious to get home to pack them up for the bazaar.
“So, did I hear you right? Is this your booth?” Alec asked me.
“Um, yes. It is my booth. Would you like a candy apple?” I asked him
On hearing it was my booth that Donna had been found dead in, he narrowed his eyes at me. “Really?”
“Oh, don’t you start that,” I said. We had been through an investigation before and I wanted no part of that. It had made me a nervous wreck, thinking I might end up behind bars in a garish orange jumpsuit. It would have clashed with my red hair.
“And where is Diana’s booth?” he asked, ignoring my remark.
I pointed at the booth next to mine and he walked over and entered it. He looked everything over, and then bent down. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and picked up the half eaten candy apple I had picked up earlier. He straightened up and looked at me. Then he peered over at my box of candy apples and looked at me. “One of yours?”
“What? No! Why, I never!” I said. That extremely poor specimen of a candy apple that he was holding was an insult to candy apples everywhere.
He tried to hide his grin. “Not up to your standards?”
“Not even close. That thing is an abomination!” I said, folding my arms across my chest. How dare he even think I had made something like that!
“I see,” he said and handed the half-eaten apple off to Yancey.
Yancey pulled out a small plastic bag and dropped it in and sealed it.
The hall door opened and coroner Brant Olney walked in. He was middle aged and portly and moved at a snail’s pace. I sighed as I watched him shuffle his way across the room, his loafer clad feet seeming to move only inches with each step.
“At least he’s finally here,” I said to Alec. “I just hope you can get him to move a little faster.”
“Oh, I’ll give it my all,” he said.
“You’ve got your work cut out for you.”
Alec glanced at me, his dark blue eyes glinting with mirth at my distress. “If you have something you’d rather be doing, feel free to go. We’ll be tied up with this for a while.”
“Well,” I said. “I do have some pies to retrieve from my house.”
“Great. Maybe when you get back, you can help man the door and keep people occupied while we finish our work in here,” he said.
“Sounds good. Lucy, come on,” I said, grabbing her by the hand. I hoped they had this investigation wrapped up and Diana down at the morgue by the time we got back. Otherwise, we would have a very realistic decoration for Halloween.
--3--
“I just don’t understand,” Lucy sobbed. “She was fine this morning. Do you think she had a heart attack? She ate an awful lot of fast food.”
“I don’t know, honey. She wasn’t that old. But you know, it seems like people are having heart attacks younger and younger,” I said. Diana was on the go all the time, but as far as I knew, she never did any formal exercise. I was thankful that I had taken on running, years ago. I was pretty sure I was never going to have a heart attack.
She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a now well-worn tissue. “I wish that Ellen wasn’t there. It seemed like she was almost glad Diana was dead. Did you see her?”
I nodded. “I know it. That Ellen is something else. I don’t know how a person can harbor such ill will toward a person.”
I pulled into my driveway and we got out of the car.
“Nice day for a stroll,” my neighbor Clyde McCoy called as he walked past us.
I nodded. “Sure is,” I said and headed for my front door.
“It’s not that nice,” Lucy said and I could tell by her voice she was getting ready to sob uncontrollably again. “Diana Bowen just died!” she wailed and then she did start sobbing again.
“Oh?” Clyde said. “I’m sorry to hear that. I was just in her shop last week, buying flowers for Mrs. Smith’s funeral. She seemed fit as a fiddle. What did she die of?” Clyde walked toward us, his balding head shining in the afternoon sun. Clyde was a good neighbor, but he liked to talk. He had retired from the fire department seven years ago and seemed to have trouble finding enough things to do to take up his time.
I really just wanted to get the pies and get back to the recreation hall, but it looked like we were going to have a hold up.
“We don’t know yet,” Lucy said. “The police think it might have been a heart attack.”
“Oh? Have they done the autopsy?” he asked, moving in closer. Clyde liked to gossip.
“No,” Lucy sobbed again. “They just found her. Like, less than an hour ago.”
“Oh, I see,” Clyde said. He rubbed his chin thinking about it. “Well, I’m sure they’ll figure it out. I sure hope it wasn’t a murder.”
“What? Why would you say that?” Lucy asked in alarm.
“Oh, Lucy, we don’t know anything right now. I’m sure it was all that fast food she ate. We need to get my pies down to the bazaar,” I said, turning to put my key in the door.
Lucy looked at Clyde and sniffed. “I’m sure it was a heart attack,” she said weakly.
He nodded. “Ayuh, I’m sure it was. Well, I don’t mean to detain you. I’ve got to get home and feed my little Sadie,” he said and turned to go. Sadie was his poodle and his world revolved around her. Sadie insisted on being fed at the s
ame time each day, and thankfully, that was going to save us from having to stand around and talk to Clyde all afternoon.
Lucy followed me into the house.
“What do you think? Do you think someone murdered her?” she asked, still trailing me as I headed to the kitchen. I mentally cursed Clyde. Why did he have to get this started?
“Honestly, Lucy. It’s way too early to know anything,” I said, pulling out a box of plastic wrap from a drawer. I had sixteen pies and only four pie keepers, so plastic wrap it was. “There’s no sense in worrying over something we don’t even know will happen.”
“But why were the police all there?” she whined. “If it was a heart attack, why would they be there?”
I sighed. “Lucy, there was a body found in a rather unexpected place. Of course the police are going to come. They need to check things out, but no one is going to know anything until an autopsy is done,” I said, wrapping a pecan pie.
I glanced up and saw my house phone blinking. I had one of those old-fashioned ones that had lots of buttons and lights. My kids made fun of me, saying no one even had house phones anymore. Well, I did.
“Here,” I said, handing Lucy the box of plastic wrap. “Work on getting these pies wrapped, will ya? We need to get back to the bazaar as soon as we can.”
I headed over to the phone and picked up the receiver and dialed voicemail. Lucy sniffed behind me and started wrapping pies.
“Allie, this is Diana,” the voice said, and paused. My blood ran cold and my heart stopped.
Then she began again, “Listen, I need to talk to you. I’d talk to Lucy, but I don’t want to upset her, you know how she can be. God love her, she can be a spaz,” she said and chuckled. “Anyway, if you could get to the bazaar a little early, that would be great.”
Then there was a click. My heart started beating again and I felt faint. Voicemail said the call was left at 9:53 AM. Where had I been that I didn’t get the message earlier? And what on earth did she want to talk to me about that she couldn’t talk to Lucy? I hit 9 to save the message and glanced over my shoulder at Lucy. She was fumbling with the clingy plastic wrap.
I stared at the wall in front of me, receiver still in hand. My mind swirled. I had really only had contact with Diana through Lucy. We ran in to each other occasionally and once in a great while, I stopped in to buy flowers. What did she want to talk about? She had sounded fine, like any other day. But she had said that Lucy would spaz about whatever she wanted to talk about.
I inhaled, trying to get my heart to slow down. It was eerie, listening to a newly dead person’s voice on your own phone.
“What are you doing?” Lucy asked after I had stood there a couple of minutes.
“What?” I asked, snapping back into reality. “Oh, nothing.”
She stood with the box of plastic wrap in hand, staring at me. “Are you sure?”
I forced myself to smile. “Yes. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” I hurried over to her and picked up one of the wrapped pies and put it into a reusable shopping bag. “We need to get a move on.”
“Sure,” she said, still watching me.
We finished wrapping the pies and carefully put some of them in the trunk of my car and the rest on the back seat. They had to sit single level so they wouldn’t get smashed, and I was worried they would slide around or fall off the seat. I would have to drive slowly and hope nothing terrible happened to the pies. I was all nerves and I almost asked Lucy to drive, but she drove like a New Yorker on a good day. With what we had been through today, there was no way she was going to be able to get the pies safely to the bazaar.
***
When we got back to the church, we slipped in through the back door. The police and the coroner were still working on Diana, and it took everything Lucy had to keep from breaking down again.
“Here, Lucy, go get some of those pies,” I said, handing her my car keys. Maybe I could keep her busy running back and forth to the car for a few minutes.
I looked at Alec. “How’s it going?” I whispered.
“We should be done here in a few minutes,” he said.
I glanced over my shoulder, but Lucy was still outside. “Does it look like foul play?”
“It doesn’t look like foul play, but that doesn’t mean much. You know? We will have to wait and see what the medical examiner says.”
I nodded. No use worrying over it until then. It was a tragedy, either way. I considered whether I should mention that Diana had called me earlier. But I wanted to listen to the recording again. I was so shocked when I listened to it that I could have missed something.
Lucy brought some more pies in, biting her lower lip to keep from crying. I patted her on the shoulder and set the pies out. I wasn’t sure how we were going to get through the night.
“Guess what?” I said brightly.
“What?” she said, sadly.
“I’ve got costumes for us!”
“Seriously?” she asked.
I nodded. “Come on,” I said and hurried out to my car. She followed along behind me, and I unlocked the trunk and pulled out a shopping bag. “You can be a cheerleader or a 1950’s sock hop girl.”
I almost saw her eyes light up.
“1950’s sock hop girl,” she said.
“You got it! Let’s run to the bathroom and change,” I said. At least this might take her mind off things for a few more minutes.
--4--
The coroner managed to get Diana’s body out the back door at around 5:30. That didn’t give us much time to finish decorating, but Lucy and I moved as fast as we could manage. There was a crowd gathered outside the recreation hall by the time Diana’s body was out of the building. We swung the double doors open and were greeted by a lot of grumpy people.
“Hey, it’s about time,” Rudy Gallo complained, his arms full of decorations. He owned a plumbing store on Main Street. I wondered if he was going to raffle off pipe.
“Come on Lucy, we ain’t got time for this!” Larry Owens said, pushing past her and bumping her. His arms were full of small tools and he dropped an orange tape measure on his way past.
“Ya dropped something Larry,” Lucy said, rolling her eyes. Larry and Lucy had dated in High School and he had stood her up for the Sadie Hawkin’s dance in tenth grade. Lucy had never forgiven him for it.
“Thanks Lucy, I owe you one,” he said and gave her a wink that could only be interpreted as sarcasm.
Lucy narrowed her eyes at him and turned her back without a response.
“Hey Allie, what was the ambulance and the cop cars here for?” Julie Sommers asked. She came in empty handed and I wondered why she was here. She didn’t own a local business, nor did she have a job as far as I knew. She was obviously a lookie loo. Plenty of people around here made chasing sirens a hobby so they’d have something to gossip about at the local coffee shops.
“Oh, you know, probably a drill or something,” I said, giving Lucy the eye. I didn’t want to be the one to spread the news of Diana’s death. Too many people were related in this small town and I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad tidings.
“A drill? I’ve never heard of the EMTs and cops doing a drill before,” she said suspiciously.
“Julie, you know, the bazaar doesn’t start until seven. We really need this time to decorate and prepare for it,” I said, hoping she’d get the hint and hit the road without me having to ask her to.
“Are you asking me to leave?” she asked, her blue eyes squinting up at me. She wore Coke bottle glasses that didn’t seem to do much for her vision. At just 4’11”, she looked up to everyone.
“It would be helpful. Just for the next hour or so,” I said as sweetly as possible.
She huffed air out of her mouth, then pursed her lips. I thought she was going to blast me, but then she turned around and left without another word. I shrugged my shoulders at Lucy and we propped the doors open. We still had work to do.
I went to my booth and straightened things up. My pies wo
uld be the shining stars of the entire bazaar. I was sure of it. I had decided to sell some of the pies by the slice. They would make even more money than selling whole pies. I moved my candy apples front and center. I was particularly proud of those. They were the best I had ever made.
I glanced over at Diana’s booth. Lucy was inside, leaning against the back of it. She had a frown on her face and looked bereft. I sighed. There wasn’t a lot I could do for her. I wondered if Diana’s family had been told. She had two sons in high school. I felt bad for them. My own children had had such a difficult time when my husband, Thaddeus, had been killed by a drunk driver. It would be hard on them.
When we had finished setting up our booths, Lucy and I went around offering our help where needed. I kept an eye on the clock and our start time was here before I knew it. Lucy and I headed back to our booths.
Kids in costumes streamed through the doors with parents in tow, stopping at each booth to trick or treat and collect a handful of candy. Halloween was one of my favorite holidays. I got a kick out of seeing the little ones dressed up, plus I got to relive my high school days in my cheerleader costume.
“Trick or Treat!” a little girl dressed as Cinderella said. Someone had taken the time to put makeup on her, including false eyelashes, complete with glitter.
“Hi sweetie, how are you?” I said, reaching for the bowl of candy I had put out for the kids.
“”Fine,” she said shyly. “My grandma brought me here.”
“She did?” I said and I picked up a handful of candy for her. She was adorably shy.
She nodded at me and looked behind her. Mary Payne was walking toward us with a smaller girl in tow. Ah, so these are the mayor’s daughters. Mary was the former principal of the only high school in Sandy Harbor, and mother of the town’s mayor.
“Hello, Allie,” Mary said with a smile. “I have another trick or treater.”
“So I see!” I said. The little girl she had led to my booth looked to be about four and was even shyer than her sister. She was dressed as sleeping beauty and was just as adorable as her big sister.
