Town In a Blueberrry Jam

by B. B. Haywood

  “Let me see, let me see!” Maggie exclaimed excitedly as she came up the ladder behind Candy, handing up the tote bag and flashlight. “What have you found?”

  “It’s Sapphire’s secret lair.”

  “The center of the spider’s nest. This just keeps getting better and better.”

  Candy swung her legs up underneath her, rose—and immediately bumped her head on the sloped ceiling. They were at the very top of the house, and though the ceiling was high enough in the center of the room that she could stand, it sloped down sharply at the sides.

  There was a small window that looked out over the backyard, dark now except for a small patch faintly illuminated far below. An antique floor lamp with a low-wattage bulb had been left on; that had been the light they had seen from the yard.

  Candy crossed to the folding table that served as a desk. It was a primitive setup, but everything Sapphire had needed appeared to be here. On the table was a fairly new notebook computer. Candy spotted a phone line that ran down through a crude hole cut in a corner of the floor, probably used for an Internet connection, though she saw it was now unplugged; Sapphire had apparently upgraded to wireless. The desktop had been kept nice and neat, as expected of Sapphire. Papers, files, and magazines were carefully organized in a variety of plastic desktop trays and sorters. Sharpened pencils and pastel-colored pens were stored in old coffee cups that served as pencil holders. Another address book—this one with a glossy pink cover decorated with stickers of ice cream cones and flowers—sat to one side of the computer. A Rolodex nearby looked as though it had been frequently used and regularly updated. The handset of a wireless phone sat beside the address book.

  No one could ever say Sapphire had been a slouch when it came to organization.

  A two-drawer cardboard file cabinet—one of those cheapie jobs you could buy at an office supply store—sat to one side of the desk. Slipping off her Polartec gloves and setting them down on the floor with the tote bag and flashlight, Candy dropped into the chair behind Sapphire’s desk and gingerly pulled open the file cabinet’s top drawer. It was heavy and stuffed full, just as she suspected. She started fingering her way back through the files.

  “Would you look at this?” Maggie asked from the other side of the room. She had wasted no time in exploring the surroundings.

  Candy turned and looked up. Maggie held a photo album open in her hands. She was paging through it. “There are pictures of her in here going back to when she was a baby. And look at this.” She closed the album and held it out so Candy could see it.

  Along the bottom right corner of the album cover, in gold block letters, was the inscription Susan Jane Vincent.

  Candy’s brows knit together. “Who’s Susan Jane Vincent?”

  “Don’t you get it?” Maggie’s eyes were huge. “It’s Sapphire! That must be her real name! She must have changed it somewhere along the line.”

  “Well I’ll be damned.”

  “You didn’t think Sapphire Vine was her real name, did you? I always suspected she must have changed it at some point, maybe to hide a sordid past. And here’s the proof.”

  “Susan Jane Vincent, huh? So she’s just an ordinary plain Jane after all.”

  “I wonder if the police know about this,” Maggie said absently to herself as she paged through the album.

  Candy looked around the room with fresh eyes. “They might have discovered her real name by now, but my guess is they haven’t found this place yet. They must have missed it when they searched the house.”

  Maggie set the album aside and looked over at Candy. “Are we going to tell them?”

  Candy shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Keep looking. See what else you can find.”

  “Right, Chief!” Almost immediately Maggie chimed up again. “Here’s something.” She reached toward a book on a narrow shelf, pulling it out and holding it up, just as she had with the album.

  “I can’t see it from here,” Candy said, squinting from her spot across the room, so Maggie walked over and placed it in her hands.

  Candy realized after a moment that she had seen the book before—or one just like it. She turned it sideways and read the gold-lettered title on the spine. “The Bell of Chaos.”

  “By none other than that great peacock himself, Sebastian J. Quinn.”

  Candy tilted her head thoughtfully as she flipped through the pages. “Why would Sapphire have this?”

  “Maybe she’s a lover of bad poetry.”

  “Or maybe she was doing research on the judges.” As Candy flipped through it, the book’s pages fell open to a section in back, revealing a yellowed newspaper clipping tucked inside. “What’s this?” Curiously she pulled it out and unfolded it.

  Maggie crowded in next to her, reading over her shoulder. After a moment she said, “It looks like an obituary.”

  “It is.” Candy scanned down through the clipping. “Somebody named David Squires. Looks like he died in a car accident. Almost twenty years ago, according to the date.”

  “A friend of Sapphire’s?”

  Candy shrugged, and started folding the clipping back up, then stopped. Suddenly curious, she unfolded it again, this time studying it more closely. She pointed with her pinky at the faded photo of David Squires that accompanied the article. “Does he look familiar to you?” He was a handsome, curly haired young man wearing a coat and tie; the photo had obviously been taken for his high school yearbook, when he had been a senior.

  Maggie leaned in closer, scrutinizing the photo. After a few moments her face lit up. “He’s the same kid we saw in the photo downstairs with Sapphire!”

  Candy nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  “So now we know what happened to him,” Maggie said softly.

  “That we do.” Candy finally folded up the newspaper clipping, placed it inside the book, and laid it on the desktop. “So that’s one mystery solved—sort of. But there are plenty more that need figuring out. Let’s keep looking.”

  “Righto!” As Maggie bounced away to continue her snooping, Candy turned back to the cardboard filing cabinet. She took a moment to orient herself, glancing at the labels on the manila folders. Yes, she realized almost immediately, these were all the files she had been seeking.

  Toward the front she found a file devoted to each of the Blueberry Queen Pageant contestants, including Amanda. Maggie would want to see that one. Candy pulled it out and set it on top of the makeshift desk, beside the copy of Sebastian J. Quinn’s book of poetry.

  Behind the contestants’ files were a thick file on Mrs. Pruitt, and a separate, much thinner one for Hobbins the butler. Those two files will bear checking out later, Candy thought. Probably some real interesting stuff in there. She pulled them out as well.

  Paging on back, she came to a file on Jock Larson. That caught her attention. What had Sapphire known about Jock? Probably a lot, Candy guessed. She pulled it out and flipped open the cover. Inside she found a stack of lined yellow pages filled with Sapphire’s neat handwriting, and long lists of names, dates, times, addresses, phone numbers, license plate numbers, family histories, even notes on what Jock and his various female companions had been wearing when they had been spied upon by Sapphire. Candy thumbed randomly back through the pages, spotting a vaguely familiar name here and there, though most of the notes seemed to predate her arrival in Cape Willington. The most recent entry was dated about six months earlier.

  Failing to find anything particularly revealing, she was about to flip the folder closed when she noticed a small plastic ziplock bag tucked in the back. It looked empty, but when Candy lifted it out and gingerly held it up to the light, she saw that it contained a few strands of long white hair.

  She puzzled over that for a moment, then placed the bag back in the folder, closed it, and set it aside with the others, planning to examine it more closely later. For now, she turned her attention back to the file cabinet. She continued on toward the back, her fingers tugging at the well-worn manila folders, glancing a
t the names on the neatly hand-printed labels. There were no other files on her or Doc, or on Maggie, thank goodness, but she found another one on Cameron, which she pulled out. A bit further on, she found one on Ben Clayton, which she also removed, thinking it could make interesting reading. No doubt Sapphire had collected a few tasty secrets about tall, handsome Ben.

  At the very back she found a folder devoted to each of the Blueberry Queen Pageant judges, including Oliver LaForce, the owner of the Lightkeeper’s Inn, and even one on Sebastian J. Quinn. And at the very back, a thick file on Herr Georg.

  Hesitating just a moment, Candy pulled the file out and flipped open the cover. More e-mails to and from Sapphire and BAK1946—obviously Herr Georg. These were more direct and threatening than the others Candy had seen. She shuffled back through the folder. Obscure newspaper clippings, apparently decades old. Fuzzy photocopies of what looked like birth records in German. And then something that surprised her: documents that looked like genealogical and military records, some with the swastika stamped ominously at the top of the page.

  As she worked her way back through the documents, Candy’s dread grew. She wondered how Sapphire had gotten her hands on all this material—and if, finally, here was a real motive for murder. It all began to make sense. If Sapphire, with her relentless digging, had turned up some dark secret from Herr Georg’s past, had she used that knowledge to blackmail him? And had that driven him to the unthinkable?

  Candy shuddered, knowing what her next step would have to be.

  She was still scanning the documents when Maggie spoke out in shock. “Oh my God!”

  Candy started, her gaze shooting to Maggie. “What? What’s wrong?”

  Maggie was standing beside the twin mattress, bending over it. She held up a discarded Phish T-shirt and a well-worn Red Sox baseball cap. “Cameron was here!”

  “What?”

  She shook the items she held, the distress evident on her face. “These belong to Cameron!”

  “Cameron who?”

  “Our Cameron! My Cameron. Cameron Zimmerman!”

  Candy shook her head. “That’s crazy. You’re jumping to conclusions. Those clothes could belong to anyone.”

  “They belong to Cameron. I’ve seen him wearing them. Plus, his initials are on the headband inside the cap.”

  Candy shook her head in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense. What would they be doing up here? You think Sapphire stole them from him?”

  “No! Don’t you see? Cameron was here!” Maggie pointed emphatically to the bed. “He’s slept here!”

  “Here?” Candy’s gaze was drawn inexorably to the bed. “But why would he . . . ?”

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “Don’t you get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “It’s simple! Cameron and Sapphire were having an affair!”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A sudden gust of wind rattled the old house. Candy glanced uneasily up at the ceiling, then back at Maggie, making a face that communicated her disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m totally serious! The evidence is right here. This must have been their secret love shack!”

  Candy’s response was a muted half laugh. “Do you know how crazy that sounds? I mean, come on! Cameron’s barely eighteen. What would he ever see in Sapphire? He’s much too young for her.”

  “She’s a cradle robber! I always knew she was creepy!”

  Candy shook her head. “I don’t believe a word of it. There must be some other explanation. Maybe . . .”

  But she gulped down her words as they heard a door open and then close somewhere downstairs.

  For a moment Candy and Maggie stared at each other in shocked silence. Then Maggie hissed, “Someone’s here!”

  “Douse the lights!”

  “We’re trapped!”

  “Shh. No one knows we’re up here. Just keep cool and we’ll be fine.”

  They switched off their flashlights, drifted back into the low corners of the room, and waited.

  They could hear footsteps walking through the house two floors below.

  “Should we turn out that other light?” Maggie whispered from her hiding place, motioning to the floor lamp.

  “No, just leave it on.”

  “The trap door’s still open!” Maggie started toward it, but Candy urged her back.

  “Just leave it alone! Don’t make a sound.”

  Maggie edged back into her corner, crouched, and waited.

  Heavy footsteps were coming up the stairs, two at a time.

  “They’re coming up!”

  “Shh!”

  Maggie shushed, though Candy could hear her whimpering quietly. They both waited nervously. The footsteps were closer now, turning into the bedroom below. Candy’s heart thumped in her chest and blood rushed through her ears. What if it was someone dangerous? What if the person who had killed Sapphire—not Ray, but the real killer—had come to kill them?

  Candy looked around for a weapon as she heard the footsteps enter the closet and pause just below the trap door.

  She spotted a camera tripod near her, tucked into the corner. Carefully she picked it up and held it in her right hand, ready to swing if necessary. It wasn’t the best weapon in the world, but it was metal and it was hard and it would do in a pinch.

  And they were definitely in a pinch.

  She heard someone climbing the ladder, slowly, cautiously. Candy shrank back into the shadows as far as she could go, her gaze riveted on the opening in the floor not six feet from her.

  A shaggy head popped up. “Is someone up here?” a nervous male voice asked.

  For a moment there was no answer. Then Maggie said in disbelief, from the other side of the room, “Cameron? Is that you?”

  “Mrs. Tremont?” He was halfway up the ladder. Only his head and shoulders emerged through the opening, but it was enough.

  Maggie stepped from her hiding place and gasped. “It is you! I can’t believe it! What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” Instead of sounding surprised, his tone was accusatory.

  “What do you think we’re doing? We’re snooping around.”

  “We? Who else . . . ?” His head swiveled around and he saw Candy. A dark look came to his eyes. “Who said you could do that?”

  “We’re trying to find out who murdered Sapphire,” Candy said, sounding apologetic.

  “I didn’t do it!”

  “No one said you did.”

  “Then why are you . . . ?”

  But before he could finish, Maggie cut in. “Are you sleeping here?” she demanded to know, pointing to the bed.

  At first he seemed surprised by the question, but then his face grew hard. “What if I am?”

  “Cameron . . .” Candy set the tripod down and took a step toward him. “We’re just trying to find out what’s going on here.”

  “Well I don’t know,” he said stubbornly.

  “But your things are here. Your clothes.”

  “Were you and Sapphire Vine having an affair?” Maggie asked hotly.

  “What?”

  “You heard me, mister! Answer my question. Were you and Sapphire fooling around?”

  His head shook furiously and he glared at her. “You’re crazy!”

  “Don’t you talk to me in that kind of voice, young man.”

  “I can talk to you any way I want! You’re not my mother.”

  “Cameron, I want some answers and I want them now!”

  “I’m leaving!”

  “Don’t you dare . . .”

  But it was too late. Cameron had dropped back down the ladder. Candy could hear his footsteps retreating back across the bedroom, out into the hall, and down the stairs.

  “Cameron! Wait!” Maggie dashed to the opening and started down after him. “Don’t you run away from me!”

  Candy heard him shout something back at her, but the words were muffled. A few moments later the back door opened again. Maggie’s shouts could
be heard as she ran out into the backyard after him.

  “Oh boy. What a mess.” Candy shook her head in disbelief, knowing the neighbors might have heard all the commotion. “Time to get out of here.”

  She started toward the trap door but turned back, her mind working furiously. She didn’t want to leave anything here that might incriminate them. She spotted her tote bag sitting on the floor near the desk, right where she had left it. She crossed to it, picked it up along with her flashlight and gloves, and started to leave.

  But she turned back again. She looked at the files on the desk. She should put them back into the filing cabinet, she thought, just in case someone else found this place. She could try to get a look at them later.

  But immediately she reconsidered that. Who knew when she would have a chance to sneak in here again? And who knew if the files would be here if she made it back?

  Better, she thought, just to take them with her. No one knew they were here anyway, she rationalized. No one would ever know they were missing.

  She tried not to think about the consequences of removing evidence from the scene of a crime. Before she changed her mind again, she stepped back to the desk, picked up Jock’s and Herr Georg’s files, and stuffed them into the tote bag. Then she added others—files for Amanda and Cameron, Mrs. Pruitt and Hobbins, and tall, handsome Ben. They fit snugly, but she got them all in.

  Her gaze darted across the desk. She grabbed the address book too and tucked the Rolodex under her arm.

  Before she left, she spotted one more thing she decided she wanted to take with her—the photo album with Susan Jane Vincent’s name on it.