Town in a Cinnamon Toast

by B. B. Haywood

  Curiously, she’d encountered members of three of those families in the museum director’s office just now. And a fourth family name was involved, through the Whitby place across the bay.

  That in itself was incredibly suspicious. But what about L. B.? And Foul Mouth?

  How did it all tie together?

  With that question in mind, she turned and was about to leave the Keeper’s Quarters when she heard footsteps coming down the wooden stairs from the second floor. A few moments later, a man and a woman whom Candy didn’t know, dressed in dark blue uniforms, emerged from the side exhibit room, still wearing light blue booties and each carrying a black suitcaselike container of equipment. They walked past her through the main room, nodding as they went without saying anything to her, and exited the building through the front door. As they left, she saw the words STATE POLICE stenciled in large yellow capital letters on their backs.

  They were soon followed by a young Cape Willington police officer whom Candy had seen around town. Apparently not noticing her, he made a beeline for Owen’s office and rapped loudly on the closed door.

  “We’re busy!” Candy heard a muffled voice shout through the door, obviously Owen. “Please go away!”

  The police officer looked mystified for a moment, tried the door handle, and found it locked. He knocked again, and when he received no response, he turned and spotted Candy.

  “Is the museum director in there?” he asked.

  She nodded. “He’s in a meeting with the board members.”

  The police officer hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and approached her. He pointed up. “We’re all done on the second floor for the moment,” he said. “Would you let them know?”

  “Of course,” Candy said.

  “We’re going to leave the crime scene tape up for another day or so, just to make sure we don’t need anything else. We’d appreciate it if you kept the museum closed for the rest of the day.”

  “What about tomorrow?” she asked.

  “We’ll let you know. I’ll call the director later in the day with instructions.”

  “I’ll be sure and tell him that.”

  “If he has any questions, he can call Officer Blackburn over at the station.”

  “Officer Blackburn. Got it.” She repeated the name as if to lock it in her memory, and noticed his incredibly blue eyes and strong, dimpled chin. “Is there anything else I should let Owen know, Officer Blackburn? Anything about the investigation?”

  She resisted batting her eyes. She had to be subtle. She knew she was fishing, but it never hurt to try.

  The officer didn’t take the bait, however, and gave her a typical canned, impassive response. “We’re not releasing any of that information right now, ma’am, but we’ll keep you posted.”

  “Oh, well, thanks for letting me know. And please tell Chief Durr that Candy Holliday said hi.”

  That caught him off guard momentarily, but he quickly recovered. “I’ll be sure and do that, ma’am.”

  Moments later he was gone as well.

  “Ma’am.” Candy rolled the word around in her mouth, trying to make it sound like he’d said it, with the kind of low drawl police officers seemed to favor. She failed. “Hmm.”

  She was all alone in the dimly lit room again. Owen and his group were still talking behind a locked door. They’d probably be in there a while longer, she thought.

  Enough time to give her a chance to dash upstairs and take a quick peek around. If she did it quickly and quietly enough, she reasoned, no one would ever know.

  She hesitated and bit her lip as she weighed her decision. She didn’t want to get herself in hot water again, just minutes after being on the receiving end of the Wrath of Owen. But she quickly decided the potential reward was worth the possible risk, so off she went.

  EIGHTEEN

  Cautiously.

  She crept up the stairs in her stocking feet, shoes cradled in her arms. She made sure she stayed toward the outside of each step, tight against the side wall, to avoid the creakiest parts of the old wooden staircase. No point alerting the folks downstairs to her wanderings, though she reasoned that if they heard anything up here, they’d no doubt assume it was the investigative team still poking around—which was exactly what she intended to do.

  She paused at the top of the staircase, wondering if she was pushing her luck too far. But then she reasoned that Officer Blackburn with the piercing blue eyes and cleft chin hadn’t specifically said she couldn’t have a look around up there, so she wasn’t breaking any laws—at least, she didn’t think so.

  Of course, she’d never really asked.

  Best do this quickly, before she was discovered—or lost her nerve.

  Forcing herself to move again, she stepped lightly across the second-floor landing and stopped just outside the door to the archive room, where she’d found Julius’s body.

  The place looked much as it had the night before, but it felt different. There was an unsettling vibe in the air. The light through the windows seemed to shimmer in an odd way, and the smells were all wrong, as if an alien from a distant planet had camped out here.

  Or a couple of crime scene investigators.

  The doorway was now partially blocked off with yellow police tape, so she stood just outside as she surveyed the room beyond.

  Books were gone, she noticed; there were none on the table, and empty spots on the shelves indicated where a book had been removed but never replaced. She couldn’t quite tell what matched from the night before, or didn’t. She imagined the police had taken the books on the table and some off the shelves as evidence.

  Julius’s notebooks were gone as well. The table was once again centered, and the chair had been set upright and put in its proper place. A taped-off, vaguely body-shaped area on the ground indicated where Julius had lain. There was another smaller marked-off area a short distance away, to indicate where the bottle of champagne had come to rest. Like the books and notebooks, the bottle was gone, obviously locked up in an evidence room somewhere inside the Cape Willington Police Department, or on its way to the state’s forensics lab in Augusta.

  Shelves and window ledges, as well as the overhead light, looked as if they’d been well dusted. The entire place seemed to have been scrubbed clean, every item picked over, tested, or collected.

  At least the forensics team had been thorough.

  Too thorough. She doubted there was much left for her to check. They’d probably taken everything that might be remotely helpful.

  But after she thought about it a moment, she realized that if there was anything of interest here, it would be in the volumes on the shelves. They still might hold a few secrets, like the slip of paper that had fallen from the book. Had the forensics team checked all of the books? Possibly, but the task would have taken hours. Of course, they’d been up here for hours, possibly through the night. Still, it was worth a look, right?

  Taking a deep breath, she stepped gingerly through an open spot in the tape crisscrossing the door, paused just inside to gather herself, and then crossed toward the shelves on her right. Eyes moving quickly, she scanned the titles. Typical volumes on Maine history, some covering centuries, others targeting more specific events and periods of time. Books on boatbuilding, sailing ships, steamboats, schooners, and paddle-wheelers were numerous. She also spotted a significant collection on the state’s geological features, like its rivers and mountains, up in a far corner of the shelves.

  Her eyes moved over the spines and old lettering quickly, looking for anything that stood out, but so far nothing caught her attention.

  She shifted to another shelf, along another wall. Here were biographies, which looked more interesting to her. She shuffled in closer for a better look.

  There were quite a few books devoted to famous Mainers, past and present. One shelf was devoted to political figures from Ma
ine—people like Hannibal Hamlin, who served under Lincoln during the Civil War, and Nelson Rockefeller, who was born in Bar Harbor. She saw quite a few volumes about John D. Rockefeller, and remembered that he was among the driving forces behind the creation of Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island. There was a sizable representation of books devoted to Maine-based artists and writers, like Winslow Homer and Edna St. Vincent Millay. And she wasn’t surprised to see nearly an entire shelf devoted to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a native of Portland.

  And then there was a section devoted specifically to Down East Maine, and Cape Willington in particular. The region’s role in the state’s development. The town’s history, including its settlement and growth through the years. And, on a lower shelf, its founding and prominent families.

  She crouched down and zeroed in on those.

  She saw quite a few books devoted to the Pruitts. That was a given, since they’d had a significant influence on the town’s development. A number of buildings around town, including the Pruitt Opera House and the Pruitt Public Library, were named after them. Pruitt Manor, out on the point by Kimball Light, was still the family’s summer home, frequented by Helen Ross Pruitt, the clan’s current matriarch, and her children and grandchildren.

  Moving on, her gaze alighted on a group of thin, older volumes, similar in size and design, all shelved together. She tilted her head so she could get a better look at the angled, faded printing, her eyes flicking from one book to another. The names on the spines were instantly recognizable.

  Bosworth.

  Ethingham.

  Whitby.

  Rainsford.

  Palfrey.

  Sykes.

  She blinked several times. There they were, all in a row, just like on the list Owen had found last night.

  She wondered what it could mean. But almost immediately she knew.

  The list of names on the slip of paper and the lineup of books on the shelf in front of her corresponded perfectly. That was too much of a coincidence to be random. Right?

  It could mean only one thing: Someone must have arranged the books purposely in that order.

  And Julius Seabury was the most likely candidate.

  He must have placed the books on that shelf, and written the names on that slip of paper, in a certain order for a reason. Had he just been researching them in that order? Or was he trying to send a message of some sort?

  Would the investigative team have noticed those books, arranged in that specific way?

  Probably not, she thought. There was nothing unusual about the way the books were shelved—at least, not to the normal eye. No one would notice the order without having seen the note—which Owen still had, tucked away in the pocket of a sport jacket hanging in his closet at home, or thrown over the back of a kitchen chair.

  She wanted to take a look inside the books but hesitated to touch them. She didn’t want to leave her fingerprints behind—at least, not more than she already had.

  When she’d left the house that morning she’d pulled on a cotton mock turtleneck shirt with long narrow sleeves. Because the sleeves were a little long, she’d rolled the cuffs up about an inch. Now she unrolled her left sleeve and gathered the edge around her fingers, as a sort of glove. Reaching up, she touched the top of one book’s spine with a cloth-covered index finger and tipped the book out. It dropped into her hand.

  It was the first book in the lineup of thin volumes. The title on the cover read, A Family History: The Bosworths, 1809–1980. At the bottom of the page, in smaller faded yellow type, was the author’s name: Lucinda P. Dowling.

  Candy had heard the Dowling name around town. There was a family of that name living out past Maggie’s house, she recalled, beyond Fowler’s Corner on the other side of the river.

  Not too far from Julius Seabury’s place, come to think of it.

  She opened the cover and flipped back through the pages. She half expected to find another note stuck somewhere inside, or maybe a code or a secret message or something that might point her in the right direction, give her some clue as to who killed Julius. But she found no such magic message. The book was published in 1999, she noticed from the copyright page, and the title page was signed by the author with a fountain pen in a flowing script, which looked as old and faded as the book itself.

  She scanned through the volume and spotted Judicious F. P. Bosworth’s name in the final pages. He’d been born in 1967 to the Honorable and Mrs. Rutledge Howard Paul Bosworth in Bangor. She quickly did the numbers and determined that Judicious would turn fifty next year.

  There was no additional information about him, but she noticed he had an older brother, someone named Marshall Bosworth, born in 1963. She’d have to ask Judicious about that the next time she saw him. He never spoke much about his family, and she’d never known he had a sibling.

  Other than that, there was nothing significant about the book.

  Same thing with the other family histories she checked, devoted to the Ethinghams, the Whitbys, and the Rainsfords, although there were some interesting historical photos of the Whitby estate, which she studied for a few moments. But she found nothing useful.

  She was just reaching for the volume on the Palfrey family when she heard muffled voices from below and realized the meeting in Owen’s office might be breaking up.

  Time to go.

  She didn’t have time to check the other two books, so on an impulse she pulled out the one devoted to the Sykes family, tucked it under her arm, and pushed the other books on the shelf closer together to disguise the fact that she’d taken one of the volumes. She’d bring it back in a day or two; she just wanted to take a little more time to look through it.

  Back downstairs, the main exhibit room was still deserted. She hurried across, but on the way out she swung behind the Long Desk, her eyes searching for the sign-in book. It was a tradition for visitors to the museum to sign in, and there was a logbook for the volunteer staff as well. She assumed there was a staff schedule somewhere but thought that might be in Owen’s office, inaccessible to her at the moment.

  But the sign-in books were gone. The crime scene investigators must have taken those as well, to see who had been in the building recently.

  Before she left, she found a blank sheet of paper and scribbled a quick note to Owen, telling him about the message from Officer Blackburn concerning the schedule for the Keeper’s Quarters. She thought of leaving it just outside his office, but before she could do that, she heard a creak of hinges and twisted her head around. The door to Owen’s office was beginning to open.

  She didn’t want to be seen by him, since she wanted to avoid another confrontation, so she simply laid the note on the top of the counter. Then, staying low, with her shoes still off, she crept along the back side of the Long Desk to the end, zipped out the door, and left the building.

  Outside, the sun was bright and the ocean glimmered. Seagulls whirled above, searching for sustenance on the rocks. Moving quickly, she headed up along the sidewalk toward the parking lot, checking her watch.

  Suddenly she knew where she had to go next.

  It was time to pay a visit to Wanda Boyle at the Cape Crier.

  NINETEEN

  In the short drive from the museum to the center of town, the general mood around her changed abruptly. The dim, solemn rooms at the Keeper’s Quarters quickly gave way to the more relaxed atmosphere up along Ocean Avenue, and Candy felt a wave of relief.

  She’d hurried up the pathway from the museum to the parking lot so fast she never had time to put her shoes back on. Now, as she pulled into an open parking spot halfway up the avenue, right in front of the Pruitt Opera House, she still wasn’t wearing them. She’d driven with her stocking feet on the pedals.

  After she shut off the engine, she finally took a few moments to slip the shoes back onto her feet. Laced up and once again fully dressed, sh
e stepped out of the Jeep and took a quick look around.

  Town Park, down the street to her right, was abloom, the trees unfolding their lime green leaves, buds springing out on the low shrubs and bushes. Across the street, the staff of the Lightkeeper’s Inn was out in full force, tidying up the place for the summer season. Store windows and doors along both sides of the street were thrust open, allowing in the sea breezes, airing out from the long closed-up winter and spring months. The villagers were out, too, winter coats left behind, chatting and enjoying the unexpectedly warm morning.

  The town was waking up from its winter sleep, and things would only get busier for all of them as they headed into the next few weeks.

  But she’d deal with the summer season when it arrived. At the moment, the next few days held her immediate and complete attention. Not just this afternoon’s gathering out at the farm, or the wedding walk-through and rehearsal dinner tomorrow, or the ceremony itself on Saturday, just two days from today. But also her upcoming encounter with Porter Sykes tomorrow afternoon at one.

  Porter Sykes.

  Grandson of the family matriarch, Daisy Porter-Sykes, now in her mid-nineties. Brother of Roger, and Morgan, his sister, who lived in New York City. Descendant of one of Cape Willington’s most notorious founding families.

  And now a local property owner.

  Apparently moving into the Whitby house, which he said he’d just bought. And she was supposed to meet him there . . . presumably alone.

  During their previous encounter a few years ago, he hadn’t precisely threatened her, but he had told her in no uncertain terms that he wanted to make the town pay for its past treatment of his family.

  “I’m putting Cape Willington on notice,” he’d told her at the time. “For too long my family has been disgraced by the people of this town. Those days are over. . . .”

  He hadn’t given her any specifics, and they’d never come face-to-face since, but she’d felt his manipulative fingers in other events that had occurred around town recently. And now it seemed as if his plan—whatever it might be—was beginning to unfold.