Town in a Pumpkin Bash

by B. B. Haywood

  Her voice trailed off as another thought came to her. She narrowed her gaze on Tristan. “But you’re here, too, aren’t you?” she said, not in an accusatory way, but more as if she’d only just recalled the real purpose for his sudden appearance in the pumpkin patch that morning.

  He responded with a lopsided grin. “My timing is impeccable, it seems.”

  She stuck to her point. “But you came out here for a reason, didn’t you? Something about a haunted house?”

  The grin disappeared, and his eyes took on a guarded look. “Yes, that’s right. Sapphire Vine’s old place. Apparently Sebastian Quinn was interested in it too. I didn’t realize it was so popular.”

  “You said you wanted to talk to me about it. You had some questions?”

  He nodded curtly. “I still have them,” he said, all flippancy gone now. “In fact, I was hoping to invite you out to the house today for lunch, so we could have a longer talk about it.”

  “The house?” It took her a moment to understand the reference. “You mean Pruitt Manor?”

  “Yes, Pruitt Manor. I’d hoped you might join Aunt Helen and myself for lunch. The offer still stands. Of course, with all that’s happened…”

  Candy understood what he was getting at, and she instantly appreciated the fact that he gave her a way out. “Thank you so much for the invitation, but today’s probably not the best day for it.”

  If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it. “Of course. I completely understand.”

  They carried a last load to the Jeep, and once they’d stuffed all the items inside, Tristan reached into a coat pocket. He, too, withdrew a business card, which he handed to Candy. “For your collection,” he said, “and in case you change your mind today, or would like to reschedule for another day. Just give me a call.”

  A few minutes later, he was gone, driving off in the silver sedan.

  “Well,” Maggie said, sidling up beside her friend, eyeing the swirl of dead leaves kicked up by Tristan’s disappearing car, “you and Mr. Pruitt seemed to be getting along fairly well, considering the two of you just met.” She’d already heard the story of how T.J. was actually Tristan James, scion of the wealthy Pruitt family.

  Candy shut the Jeep’s back hatch. “He seems like a nice guy,” she said noncommittally.

  “Hmm, yes, very nice—and very rich.”

  Candy frowned. “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Besides, the last thing I need right now is a boyfriend.”

  “True…since you already have one. So how is Ben doing out on the West Coast, by the way?” She was referring to Ben Clayton, Candy’s sort-of boyfriend and the editor of the Cape Crier, Cape Willington’s local newspaper.

  “We talked yesterday. He’s calling again tonight,” Candy told her friend as she walked to the driver’s side door, while Maggie headed around the other side and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Are you going to tell him about Tristan?” Maggie asked when they were both seated inside.

  Candy shrugged and snapped on her seat belt. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  But Maggie wasn’t quite ready to let the whole episode go. In fact, she decided to double down. “So,” she said breezily, “it sounds like our soon-to-be birthday girl has not one but two admirers.”

  “Now cut that out,” Candy replied with mock sharpness as she fished the car keys out of her pocket. “You know there’s nothing between Tristan and me. It’s like you said—we just met. And I don’t need any more complications in my life right now. We have enough trouble on our hands.”

  “You got that right.” As they backed up, Maggie glanced out over at the pumpkin patch, toward High Field. “Can you imagine Sebastian J. Quinn showing up dead like that under a pile of pumpkins? Isn’t it unbelievable? Now we not only have a dead body in our field, but I still have that damned vacant haunted house on my hands.” She let out a deep sigh as Candy headed out the dirt lane back toward the main road. “If you ask me, I still blame that house.”

  “What do you mean?” Candy asked, looking over at her friend.

  “Sapphire’s house. I’m telling you it’s cursed, just like I said. And the evidence is clear. First Sapphire dies, and now Sebastian. It seems like anyone who’s connected to that place winds up murdered.”

  “That’s crazy talk.”

  “No, it’s not!” Maggie said, her voice rising to emphasize her point. “I’m totally serious about this! That house is cursed, I’m telling you…and I just hope the curse doesn’t transfer to us!”

  ELEVEN

  Normally, Candy didn’t believe in curses, or haunted houses, or ghosts, for that matter—other than the Halloween variety, of course. But she’d seen some strange things going on around Cape Willington over the past few years—like a man who thought he could turn himself invisible, and a trio of sisters who were said to have uncanny premonitions, and a white moose that had an affinity for discovering dead bodies and old hermits in the woods. So she wasn’t quite ready to rule anything out—at least not yet, not until she determined for herself what was true, and what wasn’t.

  So even though Maggie was probably exaggerating about the curse—probably, Candy admitted—her friend was right about one thing: Whatever was happening around town, whatever had happened to Sebastian J. Quinn, it seemed to revolve around Sapphire Vine and her old house.

  Sapphire Vine.

  It was a name that continued to plague the residents of Cape Willington. Even though she’d been dead for more than two years now, struck down in the prime of her life in her own home by a vicious murderer, the former gossip columnist and blackmailer somehow managed to continue to reach out from the grave, casting a dark shadow over their quiet coastal village.

  How was that possible? Candy wondered. She knew the hold Sapphire had had on a number of individuals, including Sebastian, but had there been something else—something none of them knew about?

  Why had Sebastian been interested in renting Sapphire’s old house? Candy asked herself. Was there something still there, in the house, that Sebastian wanted?

  And if so, what could it be?

  Candy thought back to the file she’d seen laying on the front seat of Sebastian’s car. Emma, it had been labeled.

  Emma.

  Who was Emma? Why had Sebastian left that file sitting on the seat? And did it have anything to do with Sebastian’s death?

  Candy thought she knew a way to find out.

  It had come to her after she’d dropped off Maggie at her house in Fowler’s Corner, so she could locate, print out, and assemble the e-mails Sebastian had sent to her over the past few weeks, at the police chief’s request. Earlier in the day, Candy had vaguely recalled seeing the name Emma somewhere before, and it had nagged at the back of her mind for the past couple of hours. But as she backed out of Maggie’s driveway and turned toward town, she suddenly knew where she must have seen it.

  She found a parking spot along Ocean Avenue, one of the town’s two primary commercial streets, and headed up to her second-floor office at the Cape Crier, where she worked part-time as a community columnist and occasional reporter.

  She’d inherited the position of columnist from Sapphire Vine herself, who spent years with the paper before her death, covering local events while secretly amassing a collection of documents, photos, and files on many of the town’s citizens. Sapphire had then used some of the more damaging information she’d collected to blackmail several individuals.

  She’d kept some of the files in her office at the newspaper, but had hidden away the more damaging ones in a secret hideaway in the attic of her house, where only she could access them. After Sapphire’s death, Candy had inherited many of the files, and her first instinct had been to burn them, destroying the secrets they contained. But after careful consideration, she’d had second thoughts, and had decided to hold on to them, in case they were ever needed in an emergency.

  Out of respect for the
privacy of others, Candy had largely avoided going through the files, and had dug into them only once before, when she thought the information they contained might help her solve a mystery.

  Now she was about to search through them again, since she was almost certain that somewhere in those files, she’d once seen a reference to someone named Emma.

  Upstairs, she found the maze of second-floor offices deserted; it was late Saturday morning, almost noon, and none of the staff members were working today, since the paper had recently reverted to its twice-a-month publishing schedule, after putting out an issue twice weekly during the summer months, which often meant weekend hours.

  Like the other offices, the one belonging to Ben Clayton was dark and deserted. Ben had flown out to San Francisco earlier in the week to attend a journalism and social media conference, at which he’d been booked as a panelist for a Sunday-morning session. Taking advantage of the trip, he’d also managed to snag an interview with an Internet billionaire who had local roots. The interview was scheduled to take place early the following week, but Ben had promised Candy he’d make it back to Cape Willington in time for her fortieth birthday.

  Once in her office, Candy pushed the door closed behind her and stepped right to the filing cabinet in the corner, where she dropped into a cross-legged sitting position. Directly in front of her, the cabinet’s bottom drawer was labeled with only two letters: SV.

  Sapphire Vine.

  Candy took a deep breath, moved her hand to the dull metal handle, slid aside the button with her thumb, and pulled open the drawer.

  She leaned in for a closer look as the files fanned out before her, extending deep into the cabinet. All the tabbed labels were neatly printed in Sapphire’s own handwriting, usually in purple, green, or red ink, often embellished with various curlicues, hearts, and even little drawings of flowers, kitties, and stars. Many bore the names of individuals Candy knew well: Alby Alcott, Melody Barnes, Judicious F. P. Bosworth, WB (for Wanda Boyle, a file Candy had already peered into at an earlier time), Delilah Daggerstone, Charlotte Depew…

  And there it was, directly in front of a file labeled The Foxwell Sisters—an old, well-worn one simply labeled Emma.

  Gently Candy removed the file, laid it flat across the top of the other files in the drawer, and flipped it open.

  Inside, she found only two items.

  One was an old black-and-white, eight-by-ten-inch, somewhat crinkled photograph of a gravestone. The other was a photocopy of an aged index card, like those from an old library card catalog.

  She examined the photo of the gravestone first. It looked as if it had been blown up from a smaller photo, for it was too blurry to see anything in any sort of detail. She could make out the word EMMA in large, indistinct capital letters near the top of the stone, but there was no last name, or at least one that was readable. She saw several smaller inscriptions engraved into the bottom of the gravestone, but those, too, were impossible to read due to the poor quality of the photo.

  Candy studied it for several moments, her gaze focused in on the singular inscription.

  Emma.

  So, she thought, here’s the proof that I was right.

  There was a connection between Sebastian, Emma, and Sapphire Vine.

  And it appeared Emma was dead—that she had, in fact, died quite a while ago, judging by the age of the photo.

  She noticed, then, that the gravestone showed no dates. No birth date. No date of Emma’s death.

  Candy frowned. That was strange. What gravestone failed to show the life span of the deceased? Wasn’t that the whole point of one—to commemorate and help others remember a person’s life?

  She also now noticed that the gravestone appeared to be in a small, grassy cemetery, somewhat overgrown and unattended, surrounded by vegetation and what looked like some sort of stone wall. There were only a few other dark gravestones surrounding Emma’s, their inscriptions blurred as well. They appeared to be quite old.

  A family plot? Candy wondered.

  Leaving those questions for later, she set aside the photo of the gravestone and turned to the other document she’d found in the file—the photocopy of the index card.

  But before she could study it in any detail, she was interrupted when her cell phone buzzed. Momentarily distracted, she fished it out of her pocket and checked the name on the display screen.

  It was Wanda Boyle calling her. Wanda was the town busybody, who about a year ago had started a popular local blog called the Cape Crusader. She and Candy routinely butted heads over just about everything that went on in town.

  Candy pursed her lips and shook her head. She had no interest in talking to Wanda at the moment, so she slipped the phone back into her pocket without answering it and returned her gaze to the document she held in her hand.

  She noticed now that the index card depicted in the photocopy was from the Pruitt Public Library, since the library’s name was faintly visible in the upper-left corner of the card. The library was still housed in a historic building named for its primary benefactor, Horace Roberts Pruitt, the grandfather of Helen Ross Pruitt—and Tristan’s great-grandfather.

  Sapphire must have photocopied the card at some point in the past few years, though Candy knew that card catalogs had almost totally disappeared from libraries in this digital age. However, she imagined that the library might still maintain the old card catalog in some back corner of the building.

  In the photocopy, the index card appeared to be a few decades old. Across the top, typed in bold letters, were the words, A History of the Pruitt Family in Maine, 1789–1975; in 26 Volumes. Below that were the appropriate reference numbers, supporting publishing data, and author information.

  Stamped across the bottom in faded block letters was the declaration WITHDRAWN, and off to the side, written in a neat librarian’s pen, was an additional note: Volume XXIII missing. Returned to the family’s private archives at Pruitt Manor, as per Mrs. A.P.—

  Another stamp, also faded with age, established the date of the transfer as 17 AUG 72, presumably for the entire collection of Pruitt histories.

  Again, another mystery. Why would Sapphire have photocopied this old index card? What value could it have had to her? What was her interest in it? And why had it been hidden away in a file labeled Emma?

  There must be a link, Candy realized, between the missing volume of Pruitt history and the woman named Emma, now dead.

  Candy focused in on the librarian’s handwritten inscription on the card: Returned to the family’s private archives at Pruitt Manor, as per Mrs. A.P.—

  Who was Mrs. A.P.? she wondered.

  And what had Sapphire—and Sebastian—been after?

  Her phone buzzed again, making her jump.

  She fished it out of her pocket and checked the screen.

  Wanda Boyle. The woman was relentless.

  Again, Candy let Wanda’s call go to voice mail, but as she was replacing the phone, she felt something else she’d slipped into her back pocket.

  She pulled it out. A business card. Two of them, actually—one given to her by Officer Prospect, and the other by Tristan Pruitt.

  She stared at the two cards for several moments, and then on an impulse took out her mobile phone again and dialed the number of one of them.

  The person at the other end answered right away. “Hello?”

  “Tristan, it’s Candy Holliday.”

  “Candy!” He sounded genuinely pleased to hear from her. “This is a surprise. I’m glad you called. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, remember that invite for lunch today? I wonder if the offer still stands?”

  TWELVE

  Pruitt Manor occupied a prime piece of property along the Coastal Loop, sitting for more than a hundred years on a rocky, pine tree–covered promontory that jutted out into the sea, with unhindered views of the ocean to the south and east. Its only neighbor on that stretch of coastline was the historic Kimball Light which sat at some distance from the main build
ing on a ledge of land donated by the Pruitts in the early years of the previous century. It was now in private hands.

  Hobbins, the butler, must have heard her coming as she rolled to a stop in the cobblestoned courtyard that fronted the English Tudor–style manor, for he opened the stately front door as she came up the flagstone walkway. The stocky, pug-faced butler, smartly dressed in a starched white shirt, black tie, and dark suit, his salt-and-pepper hair trimmed down into a tight crew cut, gave her a gracious nod.

  “Ms. Holliday, good afternoon,” he said in greeting, with not even a trace of a smile on his fleshy lips.

  “Hello, Hobbins,” Candy said politely. “It’s good to see you again. How’s the Bentley?”

  “Finely tuned and running like a charm,” he assured her, allowing the hint of an eye twinkle to break through his emotionless expression.

  It was a small moment that passed between the two of them, a remembrance of an episode that had occurred a couple of years earlier, when Candy had been snooping around the garage at Pruitt Manor, searching for a murder weapon. When Hobbins had chanced upon her, practically catching her red-handed, she’d quickly invented a story about her interest in the Bentley. Apparently buying the ruse, Hobbins had told her more than she’d ever needed or wanted to know about the car.

  She’d been out here to Pruitt Manor only once since then, for tea with Mrs. Pruitt a few months later. Maggie had come along for that visit, and they’d had a wonderful time.

  Now here she was again, on the trail of another mystery that somehow seemed to lead to the front door of Pruitt Manor.

  The manor’s foyer, into which she stepped, looked just as Candy remembered it. The Queen Anne–style chairs were in their proper places, and the ornate wood paneling had been freshly polished until it gleamed. The men and women depicted in the austere portraits hanging on the walls—obviously Pruitts of generations past—still stared down their patrician noses at her, but now she noticed some family resemblances to Tristan, which made them a little less intimidating.