Town In a Blueberrry Jam

by B. B. Haywood

  “It doesn’t seem real,” Candy replied, leaning forward and putting a hand to her forehead. She felt hot.

  “Oh, it’s real all right. Someone really, truly did it. Someone murdered our Blueberry Queen.”

  Candy took in a sharp breath. “That’s right! I hadn’t thought about it like that. Her Majesty is dead, isn’t she?” She paused, thinking. “But if Sapphire’s gone, that means . . .”

  Maggie picked up the thread, finishing her thought. “It means, by decree, that the Blueberry Queen sash and crown must be handed over to the first runner-up.”

  “Haley Pruitt!”

  “That would be her, the granddaughter of our dear old rich friend, Mrs. Pruitt.”

  “So justice is served—Haley will get what probably was rightfully hers in the first place.”

  “True, but doesn’t it sound suspicious to you? If I didn’t know better, I’d say Old Lady Pruitt had something to do with this.”

  Candy felt a jolt of realization shoot through her. “You think so? You really think she had Sapphire rubbed out?”

  “Who knows? It’s possible, isn’t it? It sure would make a lot of sense.”

  “I suppose so, but . . . they said they’ve arrested Ray. They must think he had something to do with this.”

  Maggie snorted, a distorted blast of noise coming over the phone. “Ray Hutchins? Oh, come on! Do you really think he could do something like that?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Candy said thoughtfully. “I guess not, since you put it that way. It doesn’t seem possible, does it?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s ludicrous! Our little ol’ Ray wouldn’t hurt a fly. He tears up when he steps on a cockroach.”

  It’s true, Candy thought, remembering the look on Ray’s face a few days ago when he had put the sides of the booth on the wrong way. “But what’s the connection? How’d he get himself arrested for killing Sapphire Vine?”

  “Who knows? But I can tell you right now they’re barking up the wrong tree with that guy.”

  “But if he didn’t do it,” Candy said, her mind working feverishly, “then who?” She paused as she collected her thoughts. It took her a few moments before she could put everything in order. “Even though she had motivation, I can’t really imagine Mrs. Pruitt doing something like this—no matter how much she hated Sapphire and wanted Haley to win. And it couldn’t have been one of the other contestants, could it? Or the parents of one of the contestants?” She paused, then said jokingly, “You didn’t kill Sapphire, did you?”

  That got a chuckle out of Maggie. “Me? Hah! Listen, honey, don’t think I didn’t think about it more than once. In fact, I wish I had killed her. I sure could use the notoriety. And to tell you the truth, it was on my to-do list. But somebody beat me to it.”

  Candy smiled as Maggie continued, obviously on a roll. “Besides, if I’d done her in, I wouldn’t make a secret of it. I’d be shouting it from the rooftops until they dragged me down and hauled me off to the looney bin. They’d probably even make a TV movie about me. Maggie Tremont, Blueberry Queen Murderer. I’d finally get my name in lights, just like I always wanted.” She let out a final laugh. “So what about you? Are you the killer?”

  “Me?” Candy sighed. “Not me. I didn’t have any motive to kill her. I’ve got nothing to gain. Besides, I get woozy at the sight of blood—I have to lie down when I get a paper cut. I could never do anything like that.”

  “Well, if I didn’t kill her, and you didn’t kill her, and Ray didn’t kill her, you know what that means, don’t you?” Maggie asked ominously.

  “No, what?”

  “It means they’ve arrested the wrong person. And that means the real murderer is still running loose around Cape Willington.”

  That sent a chill skittering up Candy’s spine. “You’re right.” Instinctively she looked up to see if the kitchen door was locked, and through the window saw Doc’s pickup truck coming up the dirt lane. He had gone into town as usual that morning, telling her he had best get out of her way and let her bake.

  Now she let out a breath of relief. “Doc’s here. I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay. Call me tonight!” Maggie said as they hung up.

  Candy walked out the door and stood on the back porch, her hands slipped into the back pockets of her jeans, as Doc pulled up and called out to her with the engine idling. “Have you heard?”

  She nodded. “I’ve heard.”

  He motioned her toward the truck. “Get your things and come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the police station. We’re gonna look in on Ray and see if he’s all right.”

  Candy nodded, ran back into the house to get her purse and keys, closed the door behind her, and climbed into the cab beside Doc. He pulled the gearshift into reverse and wheeled the truck around.

  “Whoever heard of such a thing?” he muttered as he drove back down the lane. “Arresting Ray Hutchins! A kinder, gentler soul doesn’t exist on this planet. He must be frantic right about now. We’ve got to give him some moral support.”

  It took less than ten minutes to drive to the Cape Willington Police Department, which was located about half a mile outside of town in a relatively new one-story brick building on Route 196, also known locally as Loop Road. The village’s police station had relocated there about ten years ago, after abandoning a cramped old wooden building at the far end of Main Street, which it had operated out of for the better part of a century.

  Doc parked in the front lot, and he and Candy pushed silently through the wood-and-glass door and presented themselves at the information desk.

  “We’d like to see Ray Hutchins,” Doc announced to the stout woman behind the desk. She was nicely dressed, in a blouse, skirt, and silk scarf. “I believe you have him in custody in connection with the Sapphire Vine murder.”

  “Oh, hi, Doc,” the woman said, looking up and pushing her glasses up on her nose. “I thought that was you. Haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “Hi, Carol. How’re things going?”

  “Oh, you know—Phil’s lumbago is kicking up again and the wagon needs new tires. But other than that, as good as can be expected, what with all that’s happened today. So, you’re here to see Ray, huh? You’re not family, are you?”

  Doc shook his head. “Don’t think he has much of a family. We’re just here to lend moral support.”

  “Moral support. Okay, I see.” Carol picked up a pen and nodded as she looked down at a sheet in front of her. She tapped at the sheet for a few moments with the pen, then looked back up. “Well, Doc, that’s a real nice gesture, and I’d sure like to let you in to see him, and he’d probably be real glad to see you. But I don’t think it’s gonna happen today. He’s still in booking, and after that they’re gonna take him up to the county jail in Machias. We don’t retain prisoners here, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t have jail cells, Doc. We’ve got a secure area in back where we bring prisoners in to book them, but then they’re taken to Machias or Bangor for incarceration.”

  “Oh.” Doc’s jaw tightened. He hadn’t been aware of that. “No chance of seeing him before you ship him out?”

  Carol glanced up at the clock, then back down at the sheet in front of her, shaking her head. “I don’t think so. We just don’t have the facility for such a thing, especially with a prisoner like Ray. There’s the issue of personal safety, you know.”

  “Who’s personal safety? Ours?”

  “Sure. Look, Doc, it’s crazy around here right now. Why don’t you wait until all the booking and paperwork are done and then check on Ray tomorrow up in Machias. You should be able to get in to see him then.”

  Doc didn’t seem to like that answer. He looked as though he were about to burst wide open, so Candy put a restraining hand on his shoulder. To Carol, she said pleadingly, “Isn’t there any way we could see him today? We could wait around for a while, see what happens.”

  Carol pur
sed her lips. “I’d sure like to help you out, Candy, Doc, sure would, but it’s just not in my power, you know. We got ourselves a murder investigation going on here. Everyone’s real serious about it, being the rare event it is. Even got some detectives coming over from Augusta. Yup, it’s real serious all right. We’ve got to do things by the book. You can understand that, can’t you?” She gave them a tight smile that seemed to plead for their cooperation. “Try it tomorrow, okay? Up in Machias?”

  Doc let out a long, painful sigh of resignation. “Okay, Carol. Listen, do me a favor then, will ya? If you see Ray, tell him we were here, and tell him we’ll see him in the morning.”

  “I’ll do that, Doc, Candy. Good to see you both.” Back outside, Doc was still steaming as he climbed into the truck. “I can’t believe they won’t let us in to see him.”

  “Poor Ray,” Candy said as she slid in beside him. “He must be terrified in there.”

  “I still can’t believe they arrested him. Anyone who knows Ray knows he could never have done anything like that. Someone’s just making a huge mistake.”

  “Do you have any idea why they arrested him?” Candy asked as Doc started up the truck.

  “Not yet, but I know where we can find out.”

  “The diner?”

  Doc nodded emphatically. “The diner.”

  They drove back into town and parked on Main Street. As Candy climbed out of the truck, she felt a strange sensation go through her. She stopped on the sidewalk and twisted around, her gaze roaming up and down the street. She wasn’t sure what she expected to see in this town she had grown so accustomed to, but she was surprised to find that everything was essentially business as usual. Folks strolled about, gazing into shop windows, hurrying to or from work, snacking on ice cream, or chatting on cell phones. People were laughing. It all seemed so odd after what had happened over the past few days—that two people who had lived here, in this town, two people they all had known, had talked to (and in the case of Sapphire, frequently made fun of), people who had been alive and probably walked down this very street just a few days ago, were now gone, dead, one murdered not far from this very spot, the other dead after a suspicious plunge from a seaside cliff. And Sapphire’s murderer still might be running loose around town! But despite that, everything seemed to be normal. And somehow that just didn’t seem right to her.

  Once they entered Duffy’s Main Street Diner, however, Candy realized that things in town were not quite business as usual. The place was abuzz, and all the talk was about Sapphire Vine. Had she still been alive, she would have been mighty proud to have been the main topic of conversation.

  “Hey, Doc!” someone yelled from a corner booth and waved at them.

  “There they are.” Doc pointed the way. “Hi, Juanita,” he called out to the waitress behind the counter.

  “Hey, Doc. Hey, Candy. You both having the usual?”

  Doc nodded. “We’ll be with the boys.”

  “Got it.”

  Finn, Artie, and Bumpy had staked out their usual place in the horseshoe-shaped corner booth, from which they could watch the comings and goings in the diner as well as the activity on the street outside. Finn scratched at his salt-and-pepper beard as he chewed on a toothpick, while Artie made notes on the ever-present clipboard and Bumpy eyed a handful of leftover fries on Artie’s pushed-back plate. Doc greeted them as he slid into the booth on one side. Candy slid in on the other side, next to Bumpy.

  Finn gave them a wink, Artie looked up and nodded, and Bumpy raised a couple of fingers in greeting. “Hey, Doc. Hey, Candy. Where’ve you two been? We were expecting you half an hour ago.”

  “We stopped over at the police station to talk to Ray,” Doc explained, “but they wouldn’t let us see him.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Finn said knowingly. “Booking and all. Plus he’s a murder suspect. They have to be careful how they handle these things.”

  Doc shifted restlessly. “So they said, though I can’t imagine why they’d arrest him in the first place. Damn foolish, if you ask me.”

  “They must’ve had a reason,” Bumpy said, giving into temptation and filching a French fry from Artie’s plate. He dipped it generously in ketchup before he ate it. “They just don’t arrest a person like that for nothing.”

  “What kinda reason could there possibly be for arresting Ray Hutchins?” Doc shot back. “That boy is as innocent as a newborn baby.”

  Finn cleared his throat. “Um, well, not necessarily.” They all looked over at him. For a moment everyone was silent.

  “Well,” Doc said finally, breaking the silence, “it’s obvious you’ve heard something through your usual sources. You gonna tell us what you know or do we have to beat it out of you?”

  “I think we should give him a sound rapping about the head and shoulders,” Bumpy suggested.

  “Naw, he’d probably enjoy it,” Artie added with a grin.

  Finn leaned forward over the table. “Okay, I’ll tell you,” he said, his voice conspiratorially low, “but you can’t say nothing.”

  Everyone groaned. “Enough with the horseshit,” Artie said.

  “Yeah, cough it up,” Doc added. “You know something, so spill it.”

  Finn’s dark eyes shifted around the diner, as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping. Convinced he wasn’t being overheard, he folded his arms on the table and lowered his voice even more, to a coarse whisper. “Well, like I said, you haven’t heard this from me, but they arrested Ray because they have stone-cold evidence that he murdered that Vine woman.”

  “Evidence?” Candy said testily. “What kind of evidence could they possibly have?”

  Even as she asked the question, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. Finn told her anyway.

  “From what I’ve heard from the boys inside, they found the murder weapon, right there at the scene of the crime, and they traced it right back to Ray.”

  Artie snorted. “Who would be stupid enough to leave the murder weapon at the scene of the crime?”

  “Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?” Finn said. “Who would be stupid enough to do that?”

  They all sat in silence for a moment as the question answered itself.

  “So what was this murder weapon that incriminated Ray?” Candy finally asked, still refusing to believe.

  Finn glanced over at her, then said to them all, with as much drama as he could muster, “A hammer. A brand-new red-handled hammer.”

  Candy closed her eyes as the air seemed to go out of her. “Oh no.”

  Finn nodded. “From what I’ve heard, someone—Ray, allegedly—took that hammer and bashed in Sapphire’s skull from behind. Blunt trauma. Pretty gruesome, they say. She must have died instantly. Never knew what hit her.”

  “That’s awful,” Bumpy said.

  “Terrible. Just terrible,” Artie agreed, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger.

  “But what makes them think Ray did it?” Doc asked angrily. “Did they find him there? Did anyone see him do it?”

  Finn shook his head. “Not that I know of, but there are witnesses who saw Ray’s truck parked in front of Sapphire’s house last night. And someone said they heard shouting coming from the house at around nine last night.”

  Candy opened her eyes but kept them focused on the table in front of her, unable to look at the others in the booth. It all seemed so unreal. She looked at her hands, but even those seemed foreign to her as she anxiously rubbed them together.

  She had seen that hammer before—had held it in these very hands. And now it was a suspected murder weapon, wielded—apparently—by someone she knew.

  At someone she knew.

  Suddenly she felt very sick.

  THIRTEEN

  Their food was delivered, but Candy found she had lost her appetite. She sat for a while with Doc and the boys, listening to their back-and-forth banter, which turned quite salty, as it often did. She stayed as long as she could, her stomach churnin
g, until finally she pushed the plate back and excused herself from the table. “I’m going to run over to Gumm’s and pick up that chicken wire,” she told Doc. “I’ll meet you back at the truck in fifteen minutes.”

  He looked up, his gaze narrowing. “You all right? You’re looking kinda pale.”

  She smiled weakly. “I just need some air.”

  “You gonna finish that?” Bumpy asked, pointing to her uneaten lunch.

  “It’s all yours.” She left without another word, giving them a halfhearted wave before walking out of the dark coolness of the diner. Once in the bright sunlight of the midsummer afternoon and away from the talk of murder, she felt a bit better. The day was hot and the humidity was building again. Dark, ominous clouds were piling up above the western horizon. It’s going to turn stormy, the news announcer had said on the noonday forecast.

  She had been right in more ways than one.

  Clutching her purse, Candy crossed Main Street, dodging cars and pedestrians, and headed down the block toward Gumm’s Hardware Store at the far end. A few of the townsfolk said hello to her as she passed them on the way, but she replied absently, still feeling shaky.

  Ray’s hammer, she thought as she walked inattentively, head down. The same hammer I used the other day when Ray came over to the farm to help with the booth. I held the murder weapon in my hand. I held the weapon that killed Sapphire Vine.

  She felt her stomach churning even more. For a moment she thought she was going to be physically sick, but she forced it back as another thought struck her: My fingerprints are probably on the murder weapon. What if they think I had something to do with Sapphire’s death?

  Now she really thought she was going to be sick.

  Trying to shake off her queasiness, she pushed through the front door of Gumm’s and into the coolness again. Cameron, Amanda’s boyfriend, stood behind the counter, looking incredibly bored.

  “Hi, Cam,” she said, giving him a wave.

  “Oh, hi, Candy. How’s it going?”

  “Not so great right now. Where do you keep the chicken wire?”