Town in a Pumpkin Bash

by B. B. Haywood

  Mrs. Pruitt had followed her, and now came up behind her. “There are a total of thirty-seven. She started the first one shortly after she arrived at Pruitt Manor, in the 1920s. The last one—well, it’s only partially finished, as that’s the volume she was working on when she passed away. Each volume is numbered, by the way, on the first page.”

  “Thirty-seven in all,” Candy said, repeating what Mrs. Pruitt had just told her. She noticed that the missing volume was close to the end of the row on the second shelf. “What was the number of the one that was taken?”

  “It was number thirty out of thirty-seven,” Mrs. Pruitt said.

  On an impulse, Candy reached up and withdrew diary number twenty-nine from the shelf. Almost as an afterthought, she turned around and faced Mrs. Pruitt, indicating the volume, which she held up. “May I?”

  Mrs. Pruitt nodded, ever so slightly. While it appeared she was not used to having outsiders examine her mother’s private diaries, she knew it was part of the investigative process.

  Candy returned a nod before shifting her gaze to the diary she held in her hands. It had a well-worn chocolate brown leather cover, while most of the others were gray or black. The pages were not gilt edged. As delicately as possible, she flipped open the cover and scanned the first page.

  The Thoughts and Reminiscences of Abigail Pruitt, read the line at the top, written in a controlled yet delicate script, with numerous flourishes. It appeared that, despite her stern demeanor, Abigail had a fondness for expressive penmanship.

  In the top corner of the page, Abigail had noted: Volume N˚ 29.

  The first entry started a few lines down:

  Friday Morning, 4:48 A.M., June 21, 1963—Sunrise on the Summer Solstice…

  The fog broke just at dawn, giving way to the Glorious Sun in its Orange and Lavender morning veils, which flowed as a flock of multicolored Seagulls, winging away to the North and South, a wondrous display of God’s own beauty, Who made the Creation beyond my window, a sight I shall never forget. And so begins another journey through these plain, unwritten pages….

  It was certainly flowery enough. Abigail seemed to imagine that she had a poetic soul. But Candy’s attention was drawn to the more specific parts of the entry. Her mouth tightened and her brow furrowed in thought as she pondered the possible significance of the date and time of the first entry. But, she quickly realized, that was of no importance. So she read no further, but instead flipped back to the diary’s last page, and the final entry, which read:

  Wednesday Evening, 6:01 P.M., September 22, 1965, Sunset on the Autumnal Equinox…

  I have, at the close of this day, reached the conclusion of another Journal, having laid out the contents of my Life, and of those around me here at Pruitt Manor, in an effort to truthfully inform the inquisitive minds that might follow me in Time….

  Thoughtfully Candy closed diary number twenty-nine, replaced it on the shelf, skipped her finger across the open space once occupied by the missing book, and withdrew the next one in line, diary number thirty-one, from the shelf. It was a little larger than the one she’d just perused, with heavier paper. Again, she turned to its first page.

  Abigail had started this new journal at dawn on Monday, March 20, 1967—the spring equinox.

  Obviously Abigail liked to begin and end her diaries on important astronomical dates. But for the moment, that was beside the point. What were important, she thought, were the dates of the missing journal.

  “She must have started diary number thirty—the missing one—sometime around mid-September 1965 and finished it around mid-March 1967,” Candy mused out loud. “So most of the year 1966…”

  She turned back to Mrs. Pruitt. “Did anything significant happen in your mother’s life during the mid-1960s?” Candy asked. “A special event or milestone in Abigail’s life during those years?”

  Tristan had wandered back into the room, and he settled into his chair again, running a hand wearily through his thick, sandy-colored hair. “We’ve asked ourselves that same question a hundred times and keep coming up blank.”

  Mrs. Pruitt gave a more thorough answer. “I was living in New York City at the time,” she told Candy, “raising two children of my own, who were still young. My husband was in the financial business, but when he passed away unexpectedly in the early 1970s, I reassumed my maiden name and took up the family business. I didn’t return to Boston—or to Pruitt Manor—until the early eighties, when my mother grew ill. Cornelius had passed away in 1959, and for most of the years after that, Mother lived alone—either at one of the family’s homes in Boston or, increasingly, here at Pruitt Manor. What she might have been up to in those days, none of us really know.”

  But something happened, Candy thought, something she wrote down that caused Sapphire to sneak into Pruitt Manor and steal diary number thirty off the shelf.

  “How did it happen?” Candy asked. “How did Sapphire manage to get her hands on that journal and steal it from…?”

  But she stopped in midsentence when she heard music drifting to them from somewhere else in the house. It was a classical piano piece, and after a few moments, Candy realized it was being played live—not a recording—with great skill, at least to her ears. She turned to Mrs. Pruitt, a questioning look on her face.

  “‘Raindrop,’ Chopin,” the elderly woman replied by way of explanation.

  Candy’s brow fell and she shook her head. “I’m sorry?”

  Tristan filled in the blanks. “Hobbins is in a melancholy mood.” After a moment, he added, “Could be the weather, could be something else.”

  Mrs. Pruitt cast her nephew a silencing look before turning back to Candy. “It’s Hobbins. He’s playing Chopin’s ‘Prelude No. 15’ in D-flat major, also called ‘Raindrop.’ It’s one of his favorites.”

  “He always did have a thing for Chopin,” Tristan put in.

  Candy finally grasped what they were saying. “Oh!” She turned toward the doorway and the music coming from beyond it. The piece had turned darker, falling into lower notes that drummed menacingly. She was entranced. “I didn’t know he could play the piano like that.”

  “There’re a lot of things you don’t know about Hobbins,” Mrs. Pruitt said cryptically.

  “There’re a lot of things we don’t want to know about Hobbins,” Tristan added with a touch of sarcasm.

  But Candy only half heard their comments, for she was captivated by the sad, haunting melody echoing through the halls of Pruitt Manor. The notes had begun to literally beat like musical raindrops—until, abruptly, they stopped in midpiece, hanging in the air, leaving remnant echoes to fade through the hallways and empty rooms.

  It was Mrs. Pruitt who brought her back to the moment.

  “To answer your question,” the elderly woman said into the silence as she crossed to a chair and seated herself, “it was during one of Ms. Vine’s rare visits out here to Pruitt Manor, a few weeks before she…well, before her death.” Mrs. Pruitt reached for her teacup and lifted it daintily. “I didn’t even notice the diary was missing until more than a week later, when it was brought to my attention by one of the cleaning staff. Of course, I didn’t immediately make the connection to Ms. Vine—Sapphire, as you call her. That only came later, after her death, and several weeks after I saw you at her funeral. I was checking back through my appointment book one day and was reminded of Ms. Vine’s visit by an entry that caught my eye. That’s when I began to put the timeline together, and to suspect her of the theft.”

  “What was her appointment about?” Candy asked curiously, knowing she was prying.

  Mrs. Pruitt answered the question without hesitation. “She told me she was conducting research about the Pruitt family’s history for a story she was planning to write on Cape Willington’s founding families. She contacted me and she asked if she could interview me for the article. I agreed, and it was scheduled in.”

  “How long was she here?”

  Mrs. Pruitt raised her bony shoulders in a subtle ges
ture. She shook her head, uncertain. “Perhaps an hour, maybe a little longer.”

  “Was she alone during that time?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Pruitt said. “I later recalled that she was. It was for only a short period of time—a few minutes at most—when I was called away by Cook to review plans for that evening’s dinner. We were expecting guests, you see. Only later, much later, did I begin to realize that Sapphire had been in the house alone for that period of time, and could easily have sneaked into the library and stolen the diary. She had a number of folders and documents with her in a large red purse, and could have simply slipped the diary inside with her other papers. No one would have ever noticed. I came to the conclusion that she was the only person who could have taken that book from the shelf.”

  “Are you sure it’s not just lost somewhere in the house,” Candy asked, “or that it wasn’t taken by one of your family members—perhaps one of your brothers or sisters, or a grandchild?”

  Mrs. Pruitt pointed out the door toward the hallway and the rooms beyond. “I had Hobbins question everyone who had been in and out of the house during a fairly long period of time surrounding the disappearance of the diary. He personally conducted a thorough search of the house with the rest of the staff. If it was hidden somewhere here at Pruitt Manor, he would have found it. And no family member has it.”

  “So there’s only one real suspect,” Candy concluded.

  “That’s correct.” Mrs. Pruitt nodded her head firmly.

  “But”—Candy crinkled her brow again—“I’m not quite sure how I can help. I mean, you’re asking me—at least I think you are—to help solve a mystery that’s more than two years old. It’s a cold case with little or no evidence. Why me? And why now?”

  Mrs. Pruitt gave her a look that told her she’d anticipated these questions. “To answer your second question first, we received a…communiqué recently.”

  “About the diaries?”

  “About the entire collection,” Tristan said, twirling his finger around the room.

  “Does that happen often?”

  “It never happens,” Mrs. Pruitt said emphatically, “which is why it made us immediately suspicious. I’ve asked Tristan to help me get to the bottom of this issue with the missing diary once and for all.”

  “So that’s why you came out to see me at the pumpkin patch this morning,” Candy finished, “and it’s why you asked about Sapphire’s house?”

  “Yes, that’s why I came out to see you, and because of the sensitive subject matter, why I thought it best to travel incognito,” Tristan confirmed with a slight grin. “I even drove Cook’s car, since I didn’t want to take my own. And it turned out to be a rather interesting morning.”

  Candy had to agree with that. “But again,” she asked, “why me?”

  “Because,” Tristan replied patiently, “if Sapphire Vine did steal Abigail’s diary, as Aunt Helen believes—as both of us believe—then we suspect she might have hidden it somewhere inside her house.”

  Candy’s head went up in a nod of realization. “Ahh, I see. You want me to search that old haunted house of hers and see if I can find this missing diary.”

  Tristan cast a glance at his aunt. “See, I told you she was quick.”

  The elderly woman simply shook her head at her nephew’s flippant comment and sipped at her tea, which had started to grow cold. She made a face and set the cup back down on the saucer. “Of course,” she said, “we’d be willing to pay you for your detective services—perhaps a per diem, depending on how long your investigation takes, plus a reward for the safe return of the diary. If that sounds acceptable?”

  Candy didn’t have to think long about it. “Of course,” she said. In truth, it sounded like a fairly easy assignment.

  “There is one other thing,” Mrs. Pruitt said, her face tightening as if she’d just sucked on a lemon.

  “And what’s that?” Candy asked.

  Mrs. Pruitt cleared her throat. “This is a private affair, of course, so we would require your complete discretion.”

  Candy smiled. “I can be discreet.”

  The matriarch of the Pruitt clan settled back into her chair, a satisfied expression on her thin face. “Good. Then it seems we have an arrangement.”

  FIFTEEN

  Tristan walked with her back out to the Jeep, hands thrust deep in his pockets, huddled against the raw afternoon.

  “I do apologize again for all the secrecy this morning,” he told her sincerely, squinting as a gust of wind whipped past them. “As Aunt Helen indicated, we’re not really sure what’s in that diary of Abigail’s, or why Sapphire Vine would have had any interest in it, or why some lawyer representing an anonymous buyer would suddenly contact us with an offer to buy our entire collection—and offering a lot of money for it, I might add. So until we know what’s going on, and who’s behind it, we’d like to keep a very low profile on this.”

  “I understand.” Candy held a finger up to her lips, her eyes twinkling just a bit at all the furtiveness. “I promise I won’t tell a soul.”

  Tristan was looking up at the weather, but now angled his gaze toward her, a corner of his mouth pulling up in a lopsided grin. “I knew we could count on you.”

  A few minutes later, back out on the Coastal Loop, Candy called Maggie. “Wait until you hear what I have to tell you!”

  She knew she’d promised to be discreet, but there was no help for it, she’d decided. After all, Maggie had the key to Sapphire Vine’s old house. Candy had to get inside to search it, and Maggie was the only way in, so she had to know at least part of the story—didn’t she?

  They coordinated their efforts, and met at Sapphire’s house just after two thirty P.M., as a light rain began to grow heavier, and a stiffening breeze blew up the carpet of fallen leaves, which rattled noisily across the streets, sidewalks, and driveways.

  “Good thing we abandoned the pumpkin patch when we did,” Maggie said as she dashed from her old Subaru, which she’d parked in front of Sapphire Vine’s house, to the front porch, where Candy waited for her, just as the rain came on. “Whew! Made it just in time.”

  She raised a hand to brush back a few strands of her curly brown hair, which had been blown over her eyes, and bent to unlock the front door.

  Candy noticed that her fingertips were black. “What’s up with that?” she asked, pointing.

  “What?” Maggie pushed open the door and twisted around to look behind her.

  “That,” Candy said, still pointing. “Your fingers. Trying out a new shade of nail polish?”

  Maggie looked at her fingers as if she’d never seen then before, then held up all ten digits, splayed out, palms toward Candy. She’d been inked.

  “They fingerprinted me,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The police.”

  “When?”

  “Just a little while ago, when I dropped off those e-mails at the police station.” Maggie lowered her hands and rubbed at her fingertips. “I tried soap and water, but it doesn’t come off. I might have to resort to something more powerful, like industrial bleach.” She leaned in closer to Candy and whispered loudly, “You don’t think they suspect I killed Sebastian, do you? Are they going to arrest me?”

  Candy shook her head as she entered the house behind Maggie. “It probably just has something to do with the crime scene. Our fingerprints are all over those pumpkins—though I don’t know if they can lift prints from a fruit. I’ll have to check that. But my guess is that they can get fingerprints from just about anything these days. They’ll probably fingerprint all of us—all who were out there this morning helping to uncover Sebastian’s body—so they’ll know which prints are ours and which are someone else’s.”

  Maggie gulped. “Like the killer’s?” she asked, casting a wary glance back over her shoulder as Candy shut the door behind them and locked it.

  “Like the killer’s,” Candy confirmed. Together they started along the dark central hallway toward the kitchen
at the rear of the house. “They’ll probably also ask us about our shoes.”

  “Our shoes?”

  “Lots of footprints around that body,” Candy explained. “They’ll probably try to sort out whose prints belong to who.”

  “They can do that sort of thing?”

  “They can do just about anything these days, with all that forensic investigative stuff they have going on. Don’t you watch TV?”

  They’d reached the kitchen, where they dropped some of their things on the table. “Only the cooking and travel channels,” Maggie admitted.

  “So, did you hear anything interesting about the murder case while you were at the station?”

  Maggie shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Not a thing—and I really made an effort, because I knew you’d ask. I tried grilling Carol, the receptionist, and even turned on the charm with the nice young police officer who fingerprinted me—but they’re not saying a thing. They’re all buttoned up tighter than a lobster claw.”

  “I bet they are,” Candy said. “Another murder in town. It’s becoming an epidemic. They have to be going crazy over there.”

  Just then her cell phone buzzed. She scooped it out of her back pocket and checked the readout. It was Wanda Boyle again—the fourth time she’d called, Candy noticed from the display. And four voice mail messages were waiting for her as well.

  Candy slid the phone back into her pocket. She had no intention of talking to Wanda right now—not ever, if she could help it. Instead, she looked up and around her, and rubbed her hands together. “Okay, you ready?”

  “Sure.”

  “So where do you think we should start?”

  “Ummm…” Maggie dragged out the word, looking back and forth around the kitchen, a serious expression on her face, as if she was in deep thought. “What are we looking for again?”