Town In a Blueberrry Jam

by B. B. Haywood

  They never noticed her leaving.

  Back out in the truck, Doc was listening to a country song and tapping away noisily on the steering wheel. He started up the truck as Candy climbed in beside him.

  “So, we good to go?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I saw Cameron’s car pull up a few minutes ago.”

  “Yup,” Candy said.

  “Something’s going on, huh?” Doc glanced over at his daughter. “You up to no good?”

  Candy gave him a sly smile. “Yup.”

  He laughed and patted her on the knee as he turned the truck back toward home. “That’s my girl.”

  FIFTEEN

  It was nearly three thirty by the time Candy dropped off the pies at Melody’s Café. They had agreed to a price of nine dollars apiece, which was adequate for Candy and would still turn a nice profit for Melody, who planned to sell slices at three dollars apiece.

  “That should hold me for this week,” Melody told her. “They look lovely.”

  “Thanks. I’ll have more for you on Monday.”

  Melody paid her in cash, which she pulled from the register, and with forty-five dollars in her pocket, Candy walked back out to the Jeep as a fierce gust of wind, full of the scent of earth and sea, swept down from the sky and assaulted her, whipping her hair about her face.

  Though the morning had been fairly warm and pleasant, the day had steadily worsened as ominous clouds gathered on the western horizon. Those clouds had reached them now, the dark churning sky swallowing up the sun. Candy climbed into the driver’s seat as the first few heavy raindrops pelted the sidewalk and street around her.

  She sat for a moment as the sky broke open and the deluge began. Lightning crackled in the distance, and a roll of thunder shook like a fist of fury down from the skies.

  Candy wasn’t thinking about the storm, though. She was thinking about Sapphire Vine and Ray and that red-handled hammer. Something Maggie had said to her on the phone that morning kept nagging at her, tickling away at her brain: Ray wouldn’t hurt a fly, Maggie had said. He tears up when he steps on a cockroach.

  Maybe so. But they had found his hammer at the scene of the crime. And according to Finn Woodbury, someone had seen Ray’s truck in front of Sapphire’s house last night, when Sapphire had been murdered. What had he been doing there? And could he really have hit her with his hammer?

  Candy recalled the way Ray had cradled the hammer when she had handed it back to him that day in the barn. Suddenly she knew what had been bothering her all day.

  Ray loves that hammer, she thought. The other day, he treated it like some sort of precious thing, almost as though he were in love with it. He didn’t even want me to touch it. He didn’t want it to get damaged at all. So if he loves that hammer so much, why would he muck it all up by hitting Sapphire in the skull with it? And why would he leave it there after he hit her?

  None of it made any sense.

  Candy started up the Jeep. She decided she had to talk to Maggie again, to try to sort it all out. She drove to the intersection of River Road and the Loop, made a left turn, then another left onto Main Street and a right onto Ocean Avenue. It could be difficult to find a parking space along here in the afternoons, but she lucked out and found a spot practically right in front of Stone & Milbury’s. Ignoring the pelting rain, she jumped out of the Jeep and dashed toward the insurance agency’s front door.

  It was only a dozen steps or so, but she was soaking wet by the time she made it inside. “Whoa, is it raining hard out there!” she exclaimed as she walked through the reception area and turned the corner into Maggie’s office.

  She stopped dead. Three curious faces looked up at her.

  Maggie sat behind her desk, with two stacks of papers in front of her. A middle-aged couple sat in front of the desk, facing Maggie.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Candy said in surprise. “I didn’t realize you had customers.”

  With the height of professionalism, Maggie rose and gave the couple a pleasant smile. “Excuse me for a moment,” she said to them. “A friend of mine. I’ll be right back.”

  Taking Candy by the arm, Maggie steered her out of the office.

  “I’m so sorry,” Candy said in embarrassment as they walked back into the reception area.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Maggie dismissed the interruption with a wave of her hand. “We’re just finishing up some things. Where’ve you been? You look like a drowned rat.”

  “It’s raining.”

  Maggie scowled. “You know, they have these neat little things called umbrellas. Fabulous invention. They do a great job of keeping you dry when it rains. You might want to check one out sometime.”

  “Ha, ha, very funny. Listen, I have to talk to you about something.”

  “Can’t right now, honey. I’m in the middle of a meeting.” She leaned a little toward her office and called to her clients in the friendliest possible tone, “I’ll be right there!”

  “When are you free?” Candy asked.

  “I’m here ’til five thirty.”

  “Meet for drinks after work?”

  Maggie considered that for a moment. “Don’t know if I can, but I’ll try. Call me around five, okay?”

  “Got it. Good luck with your customers.”

  “And you get yourself an umbrella, girl. Better yet, take this one.” Maggie reached toward a twenty-year-old metal coatrack that stood near the door. A battered old black umbrella was leaning against one of the posts. “Someone left it and never came back for it, so it’s yours.”

  “Thanks, you’re a doll.”

  “That’s what all my boyfriends tell me,” Maggie said with a grin as she sashayed back into her office.

  Outside, the wind was whipping so hard that it threatened to rip the umbrella right out of Candy’s hand. Before she knew what was happening, she was blown sideways down the street. She ducked into an alcove and stood there for a moment in the shelter of an overhang, fiddling with the umbrella, which had flipped outward, and trying to gather up the courage to make a run for her Jeep. Then a door pushed opened behind her and a tall, thirty-something man emerged from the building, nearly running her over in his haste.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” the man said, looking up.

  “No, it was my fault. I just had to take refuge from the rain for a few minutes.”

  The man stopped beside her and squinted up into the sky. “It is coming down heavy, isn’t it?” He looked over at her. “I love summer storms like this, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes,” said Candy a bit bashfully, “but it doesn’t do much for one’s appearance.” She pushed some of the wet locks off her forehead.

  He laughed pleasantly. “You look just fine to me.” He studied her a little closer. “You’re Candy Holliday, aren’t you? You live with Doc out at Blueberry Acres?”

  “That’s right. Have we met before?”

  He held out his hand. “Name’s Ben Clayton.”

  “Oh! We have met, I think,” Candy said, shaking hands with him, “though for the life of me I can’t remember where. You work for the Cape Crier, right?” The Cape Crier was the local weekly newspaper—The Voice of Downeast Maine, as its tagline claimed. It went out to readers in parts of two counties—Hancock and Washington.

  “Actually, I’m the editor,” Ben said.

  “Oh, that’s right. I’ve seen your name in the paper. What a fun job.” But as the words left her mouth, the smile fell from her face as she realized what that meant. “Oh! You must have worked with Sapphire.”

  His expression, too, took on a measure of seriousness. “I was her boss.”

  “I didn’t realize,” Candy said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Ben nodded. He was taller than she was, just shy of six feet, she guessed, and lean, with a rugged face and light brown hair that he had let grow a bit long in the back. He wore jeans and an open-collar blue shirt, and carried a scuffed, dark brown leather satchel. Candy wondered why she hadn’t noticed him mu
ch around town before.

  “Sapphire’s death was a shock to us all,” he said heavily. “It’s tragic how something like that can happen so quickly, and someone you knew and liked and worked with is just . . . gone, just like that.”

  “It’s terrible, just terrible,” Candy agreed, eyes downcast.

  They both were silent for a moment. Then Ben asked, “Were you a friend of hers?”

  “An acquaintance,” Candy hedged. “We knew each other, but we didn’t hang around socially or anything like that.”

  “Hmm,” Ben said, watching her.

  What does that mean? Candy wondered.

  “You know, this may sound strange,” he continued after a moment, “but it seems to me that Sapphire didn’t have many friends. Oh, she knew a lot of people—I was always astounded by how many people she knew—but she didn’t seem to be close to many of them.”

  Candy wasn’t sure how to reply to that. “Well,” she responded tactfully, “maybe it’s because she was such a . . . unique personality.”

  “You can say that again.”

  They stood awkwardly in silence for a moment. Finally Candy looked out at the sky. “Well, I guess I should make a run for it. . . .”

  She straightened out the umbrella and turned up her collar, preparing to brave the rain, but then Ben touched her by the elbow. “Candy, before you go, can I ask you something?”

  Candy looked at him curiously. Oh my God, she thought as a small smile flickered across her face, is he gonna ask me on a date? Swallowing, she said, “Sure.”

  “This may sound odd,” he began, then hesitated. He seemed to reconsider what he was about to do. “Maybe . . . maybe I should wait until another time.”

  Candy forced her smile just a bit as she turned to face him. “No, go ahead. I’d like to hear your question.”

  “Well, all right, then. I have to confess that I’ve done some checking up on you.”

  That took Candy by surprise. “You have?”

  He laughed and looked a bit embarrassed. “I hope that didn’t come out the way it sounded. You see, Sapphire keeps these files on people in town, including you.” As the smile fell from Candy’s face, he added quickly, “For her column, you know. She does extensive research. I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as she does—um, did—in, um, ensuring the accuracy of her columns. She collected everything—clippings, biographical histories, business cards and announcements, magazine articles, press releases, anything she could get her hands on. And all that information went into her files, for research.”

  “And she has a file on me?” Candy asked incredulously.

  Ben nodded. “The police left just about an hour ago. They wanted to go through Sapphire’s office and files. Just routine, they said. They didn’t find much, but they sure made a mess of the place. Anyway, as I was straightening up, I came across your file stuck in the back of one of the drawers, so I flipped through it. I guess curiosity got the better of me. Anyway, I noticed that you’ve done some writing in your career.”

  “Oh. That.” Candy made a face. “That was years ago. I worked for a marketing firm in Boston for ten years, and I wrote a few magazine articles on the side—personality profiles, mostly, interesting business people around town, that sort of thing.”

  “Published in some of the local newspapers,” Ben prompted.

  “They were small papers. I’m not sure anyone even read them. And they paid practically nothing.”

  “But you have written and been published?”

  “Well, yes, but—” Candy paused and tilted her head, unable to keep a confused look off her face.

  “I guess I should get to the point,” Ben said, sounding professional again. “As you know, Sapphire’s weekly gossip column was one of the mainstays of the newspaper. In fact, I probably would not be exaggerating if I said it was one of the best-read features in the paper. That and the school lunch menu. And the police blotter, of course.” He sighed and went on. “I’d probably also be accurate if I said that we sold a lot of papers strictly because of Sapphire’s column. And now that she’s gone . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I’m in a bind, and I was wondering if, well, if you’d like to take over the writing of her column.”

  Candy eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m completely serious,” Ben continued quickly. “Here’s the thing. I have to get someone on that column right away, or else I’m going to have a big hole in next week’s paper. I’d do it myself, but I’ve got my hands full with Sapphire’s murder investigation and Jock’s death and the festival and everything else that’s been going on around town. Wow, what a week.” He made a face and shook his head. “Plus, I’m a bit thin on staff because of summer vacations. And a lot of my volunteers have been bailing on me. I just need someone to write up some info about the pageant and contestants, plus some local gossip stuff. You know, the sort of thing Sapphire used to do. Jane Doe got married, Bobby Jones scraped his knee, Eddie and Edith’s kid joined the Navy, that sort of thing. Community news.”

  Candy wasn’t sure what to say. “Well, I don’t know.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t have much trouble doing it, not with your writing experience. I can show you, if it would help to convince you.” He pointed up the stairs behind them. “You got a minute?”

  Candy looked out at the rain, which if anything was coming down harder than before, and then looked over at Ben Clayton.

  Tall Ben. Handsome, lean, rugged Ben. Smart Ben. Very smart Ben.

  A newspaper editor. Employed Ben.

  Without seeming too conspicuous about it, she glanced down at his left hand.

  No ring.

  Tall, handsome, rugged, smart, employed, single Ben.

  “Well, sure, okay, I guess I have a few minutes,” Candy finally said with a sweet smile.

  He flashed a broad grin, showing off beautiful teeth. “Great! Come on, I’ll take you up to our offices.”

  The Cape Crier was run out of cramped quarters above a real estate office. An ancient dark staircase led up to the rabbit warren of rooms that wound their way back into the nether regions of the building. “It’s a bit of a mess up here,” Ben apologized as he led Candy to a small, windowless office not much bigger than a closet. He pulled a string attached to a porcelain light fixture screwed into the ceiling. The room was cast in the harsh light of a single naked bulb.

  “This is—sorry, was—this was Sapphire’s office.”

  Candy wasn’t impressed. In fact, she found it hard to hide her disappointment. The newspaper business always sounded so glamorous to her, but this was far from what she expected.

  A small metal desk was shoved into one corner. A computer that must have been five years old—at least—sat to one side of the desktop. On the other side were metal trays overflowing with files, notes, and papers in disarray. A gray metal file cabinet and a rickety old chair were lined up against the opposite wall.

  Sapphire had done her best to add some spice to the place. Posters of kitties and horses covered cracks in the walls, and a Tiffany-style lamp sat on one corner of the desk. A colorful, cozy-looking knitted cushion covered the seat of the desk chair. Knickknacks and paperback novels lined a sad-looking shelf. Dated press passes were thumbtacked to a small bulletin board on the wall in front of the desk, along with neatly printed three-by-five cards that said things like, “You look mahhhvelous today” and “You go, girl!”

  It all made Candy feel incredibly depressed.

  Barely noticing the clutter, Ben crossed to the desk and plucked a green file folder from the top tray. “Like I said, the police have been through here, so it’s a bit of a mess.”

  How could you tell? Candy nearly blurted out.

  “Anyway,” Ben said as he flipped open the folder and ruffled through the papers inside, “here are some clippings of Sapphire’s previous columns, so you can see the kinds of things we’re looking for. I’ve also included some notes that she made at . . . um . . . a
t the end of last week, as well as a few notes of my own. Unfortunately, she never really had a chance to get started on this week’s column. It was supposed to be a firsthand account of the pageant, of course. I thought she had done some preliminary research work on it, but I haven’t been able to locate any of that information yet. Once I dig around a little it’ll probably turn up.”

  He closed the file and held it out to Candy, who took it tentatively. She looked around. “You mentioned something about other files?”

  Ben held up a finger. “Right.” He turned to the file cabinet and pulled open one of the drawers. “She kept all her research in here.” He ran a finger along a long line of files, arranged alphabetically by name, Candy saw. Many of the names she recognized.

  Ben continued. “A few of them are gone, of course. The police took Ray’s and a few others. But they didn’t find much. I’ve been through a lot of these. There’s nothing you’d call injurious or scandalous in them. It’s all pretty harmless.”

  He drew out a few of them and flipped through the papers inside to show her.

  “Can I see the file she kept on me?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure.” Ben turned, dug back into the filing cabinet, and pulled out a blue file. “This is yours.” He handed it over, a bit sheepishly, she thought.

  With some trepidation Candy flipped open the cover and glanced at the contents, but Ben had been right. A few clippings about Blueberry Acres, a photocopy of a newspaper article Candy had written a half dozen years ago (though she had no idea where Sapphire had found that), and a loose-leaf page with a few notes jotted on it. One scribbled line in particular caught Candy’s attention. It read, “lonely divorcee.” Candy noticed that there was a little heart over the i in divorcee.

  Lonely? Was that how she seemed to Sapphire?

  Funny, but of all the words Candy would have used to describe herself, and after all she had been through, she never would have considered herself lonely. In fact, she felt quite the opposite most of the time.

  “So, are you interested?”

  Candy looked up. Ben was watching her with a hopeful look in his deep brown eyes.