Town in a Pumpkin Bash

by B. B. Haywood

  “Why, certainly. I’d be glad to help any way I can.” Julius looked around. “Why don’t we sit over here,” he said, indicating two padded chairs angled together off to one side of the main exhibit room, “so I can take a load off my feet and give you my undivided attention.”

  Once they were seated, she showed him the black-and-white photograph of Emma’s gravestone first, placing it carefully into his hands. “I wonder if you would take a look at this and tell me if you’ve seen it before, as you’ve conducted the research for your books.” She indicated the engraving on the tombstone. “As you can see, there’s no last name for the deceased—and no dates of her birth or death, which I think is rather peculiar, isn’t it?”

  “Hmm. Yes, I would think it is. Is that what it says?” He squinted at the photograph for a few moments before fishing a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket. He perched them carefully on his nose, tilted his head a little, and studied the photograph again. After a few moments, he indicated the lower areas of the tombstone with a swirl of his finger. “There’s more writing down here but I can’t make it out,” he observed.

  “That’s right. It’s too blurred.”

  “Hmm,” Julius said again. He tapped a finger on his chin, then rose and crossed the room to the long wooden counter that served as the museum’s information hub. He sidestepped around it and opened a drawer on the back side. Briefly he searched through it before pulling out a magnifying glass, which he used to study the photograph again. But finally he shook his head. “I can’t make out the smaller engravings, I’m afraid,” he said apologetically.

  “Does the tombstone look familiar?” Candy asked. “Have you seen it anywhere around town, in one of the cemeteries, maybe a private cemetery somewhere?”

  Julius gave her questions some thought, but in the end he had to admit he didn’t recognize it. “It does look as if it’s located in a private cemetery, but none of the ones I’ve visited in the area has that specific type of stone wall surrounding it.”

  “Would you be able to tell me where some of the private cemeteries around town are located, so I can check them?”

  “Of course,” Julius said. “I’ll draw you a map. In fact, there’s a good one in one of my books. I can mark the spots on that for you.”

  He sidled to the far side of the counter and pulled a narrow, trade-sized paperback book from a display stand. He licked his index finger before flipping open the book to the page he sought, then placed it on the counter, leaned over it, and started marking down several sites on a map with a red pen. When he was done, he closed the book, crossed back over to her, and placed it in her hand. “If I may ask, why the interest in these cemeteries and this old photograph of a tombstone? Does it have anything to do with the murder?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” Candy said, and as he eased back down into the chair opposite her, she leaned in a little closer to him, her voice dropping to a low tone, so only he could hear her. “But I am following up on a number of clues, which brings me to the other reason I came to see you. I wanted to ask you about a story you wrote for one of your books, concerning a young woman who died in Gumm’s Pumpkin Patch about twenty years ago or so. It was a mysterious death—apparently they were never able to identify the body. You’ve written about that death in one of your books, right? Do you remember it?”

  “I remember it well,” Julius said. “It’s in that book you’re holding in your hands.”

  Candy glanced down at the book’s title. Cape Willington Ghost Stories and Mysteries, it read.

  “Tourists love it,” Julius said. “Can’t get enough of those Maine ghost stories, can they? I’ve gone back to press with it a dozen times.”

  Candy smiled warmly. “That’s wonderful to hear. I can’t wait to read it. So, the story about the dead body in the pumpkin patch…”

  Julius nodded and continued. “I was living here in town when it happened. I was in insurance in those days, and a member of the Rotary and the chamber, so I used to pay attention to the local news, especially when it affected the town’s reputation. But that story pretty much baffled us all—this young woman who just showed up dead in that pumpkin patch one morning.”

  “Do they know how she died?”

  Julius shook his head. “Not specifically. Exposure, possibly. Or natural causes. Something like that.”

  “I’ve heard they labeled the death ‘suspicious.’”

  “They did initially, but to the best of my knowledge there was no indication of foul play.”

  “Do you remember what time of year it was—when she was found?” Candy asked.

  “Well, it was right around this time, I seem to recall, in the fall, though it might have been a little earlier in the season. I remember that, in the photographs I saw, the trees still had their leaves on them. So maybe late September or early October.”

  For some reason that gave Candy a chill. “And they were never able to figure out who she was?”

  “Never figured it out, at least that I heard.”

  “During your research, did you learn anything special about her—the color of her hair, or what she was wearing, or where she was from?”

  “Well, they didn’t release much information, I can tell you that,” Julius said. “I know, because I looked. I went back and read over all the old newspaper clippings I could find about that incident, but there wasn’t much to tell. The authorities put out the word that they’d found the body and were looking for her next of kin, but as far as I know, no one ever stepped forward to claim her.”

  “So what happened to the body?”

  Julius shrugged. “I was never able to find out. It just seemed to…disappear.”

  “Disappear?”

  “A few weeks after it happened, we’d all pretty much forgotten about it. I think there are probably some police records about the incident, but I haven’t been able to get my hands on them—but this was a good while ago when I checked. I wrote that book more than ten years ago. Those records might not even exist now. I’ve never gone back to look for them again. So everything I know about the incident is written down in that book.”

  Candy offered to pay him for it but he refused. “Doc’s bought more than his fair share, so consider that one on the house. Sort of a buy-one, get-one-free sale.”

  “Thank you for all the information, Mr. Seabury,” Candy said, but as she started to rise from her chair, he put a hand on her arm. Under its gentle weight, she settled back down, perching on the edge of the seat. “Yes? Is there something else?”

  His brow had pulled together and he looked puzzled, as if he’d just remembered something troubling from long ago. “There was one peculiar tidbit I heard about that incident with the poor dead woman,” he said. “Due to the nature of the…information, I decided not to publish it. But I might as well tell you now, given what happened out in that field yesterday. I got this story from a farmer who lives out that way—Tom Wharton. You might remember him, he…but, no, he passed away a while ago, didn’t he? Not many people around here probably remember him anymore. I don’t even think it’s called the Wharton place anymore. Not sure who owns it now.”

  “So what did he tell you?” Candy asked, prompting the elderly gentleman.

  “Well, he told me he was up late the night before they found that woman’s body. Couldn’t sleep, he said. Indigestion. His wife’s meat loaf, he told me. Too many onions. Anyway, he was gazing out the bedroom window at the moon, which was almost full. And he said he thought he saw, by the light of that almost-full moon, a Bentley driving down the road past his house, with its lights out. Don’t know if he told that to the police, but that’s what I heard.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Her conversation with Julius Seabury buzzed in her brain as she set off to search the town’s cemeteries.

  A Bentley. With its headlights out.

  Could it have been the same Bentley that belonged to the Pruitts? she wondered. Had Hobbins been behind the wheel? Could he have had s
omething to do with the dead woman found in the pumpkin patch twenty years ago?

  Or what about Mrs. Pruitt?

  And if so, what was the link? What tied everything together?

  Had Hobbins even been working for the Pruitts two decades ago?

  She had plenty of questions, but for the time being there were no answers. Still, she thought, trying to stay positive, maybe she’d find some today.

  She started at Town Cemetery, which was adjacent to Town Park, just a few hundred yards up the Coastal Loop from the lighthouse’s parking lot.

  It was a small cemetery, the town’s first, dating back to the mid–seventeen hundreds. Surrounded by a tall black wrought-iron fence, it was officially part of the Unitarian Church next door, and was relatively well maintained. Candy estimated there were a few dozen slate and granite tombstones within the fenced area. A historical plaque near the entrance gate, weathered from years of exposure to harsh elements, provided a two-paragraph description of the old graveyard.

  Candy could tell without even entering that the tombstone she sought was not here. The look of the place was all wrong—not at all like the cemetery depicted in the old black-and-white photograph. Nevertheless, just to make sure, she walked inside and wandered among the tombstones, reading the inscriptions and the family names—Littlefields and Thayers, a few Wilsons and Pollards, all surnames she still saw sometimes around town, borne by current generations. But there was no gravestone for someone named Emma.

  Her next stop was Stone Hill Cemetery, the largest on the cape, and where the relatively fresh graves of Sapphire Vine and James Sedley were located, among many others.

  Here, the tombstones—mostly marble and granite, though there were a few tall, black slate stones in the older sections of the tree-spotted cemetery—were spread across a gentle slope and ridge overlooking the English River. And today, the quiet, picturesque landscape epitomized autumn in New England—still-colorful trees beginning to bare their dark, artfully twisted limbs and branches; the swirling waves of dry, curled, parchmentlike leaves, scattering among the gravestones and monuments, nearly knee-deep where they gathered in the low spots; the weak, slanting light filtering through the late-afternoon sky, illuminating open patches of gray, dying grass so that they almost shone, like pools of pale water.

  Candy had been out here on a number of occasions, but had never taken much time to walk around the property. It was a large graveyard, perhaps five or six acres in all, stretching across a long, narrow strip of land marked by rocky outcroppings in some spots—a lot of ground to cover.

  She toured as much of it as she could from behind the wheel of the Jeep, cruising along the narrow two-wheel dirt lanes that wound among the various sections and wove between the oaks, maples, and chestnuts. Several times Candy stopped the vehicle and climbed out to check a certain tombstone or to look down on sections of the cemetery from certain vistas. She didn’t have time to check every stone, but she inherently knew that what she was looking for was not here.

  She glanced at her watch. Just past three. She had a little while before she headed over to the police station for the press conference at four P.M., so she reached for Julius Seabury’s book, which she’d laid on the Jeep’s front passenger seat, and thumbed back through it until she found the map with the private cemeteries marked on it.

  Most of them looked like they were associated with private families—Blackwoods, Clarks, Merritts, Hollands, and McCays—and were located on private land. There were a few that might be located on town or conservation land, though, so Candy headed for those first, thinking that might be the most logical place to bury an unidentified body.

  She spent twenty minutes searching for a cemetery supposedly located off a dirt road that ran along the river, past the site of an old settlement, now in ruins, but when she finally located it, she was disappointed to find only a dozen or so tombstones, most commemorating the resting places of Yorks, with a few Tripps and other names mixed in.

  She had better luck with a cemetery up toward Route 1, at the northwestern corner of the cape near the western coastline, where she found a walled cemetery next to a white clapboard building called the Blair House, home to a small private historical society. It was closed for the day. In the graveyard she found tombstones for the family members who had once lived there, but not surprisingly, most were from a single family—the Blairs—all of whom had passed away during the eighteen hundreds.

  No Emma.

  So she scratched the Old Blair House Cemetery off her list and drove back to Cape Willington, arriving at the police station just as Chief Durr began his remarks at a temporary podium that had been set up in front of the building.

  Parking was at a premium, so Candy pulled the Jeep into a tight spot out by the main road, grabbed her tote bag from the backseat, and joined the crowd gathered around the chief, with her digital recorder in hand.

  After all, she had a story to write, too, though her deadline was not until the end of the week for the following week’s edition.

  But ten minutes later she’d heard nothing new, as the chief was just rehashing old information: the identity of the victim, the manner in which he’d been found, the apparent fatal wounds on the body, his academic career in Massachusetts, his ties to the town—but Candy knew all that already. The chief officially declared this a homicide investigation, and named a state detective who was assisting on the case. Then, with a barely disguised grimace in anticipation of what might come, he said tightly, “Now I’ll take a few questions.”

  Olivia March, the reporter for the Herald, had stationed herself in the front row. “What can you tell us about the victim’s whereabouts in the forty-eight hours leading up to his death?” she asked in what Candy thought was a very professional manner.

  “Well, we’ve contacted the authorities at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where the victim—Mr. Quinn—taught, and they’re cooperating with us. We’re also working with the Amherst PD to follow up on a few local leads there. There’s not much else I’m prepared to say about that at this time.”

  “What about the victim’s cell phone and e-mail records?” asked another reporter, who Candy didn’t recognize.

  “We’re looking into that,” the chief said in a clipped fashion.

  “Why do you think Sebastian J. Quinn was murdered in that pumpkin patch?” Olivia March asked.

  “That’s part of the ongoing investigation. I can’t discuss it at this time.”

  “Was he murdered in the pumpkin patch or was his body moved there from another location?” Olivia pressed.

  The chief frowned and shook his head. He looked like he had a bad case of indigestion. “Again, no comment.”

  Wanda Boyle piped up from the back of the crowd. “Do you have any suspects?”

  “I can’t discuss that,” the chief said, and rapped the top of the podium with a knuckle. “Now, if there’s nothing else, ladies and gentlemen…”

  Candy’s hand shot up, almost before she was aware of it. “On a different subject, Chief, where might a Jane Doe—an unidentified, unclaimed body—be buried in town? Is there a certain local cemetery where they’d inter the body?”

  Chief Durr’s neck craned toward her and he squinted in her direction. He looked immensely displeased. “I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to, Ms. Holliday.”

  “You know, if an unidentified body—a Jane Doe…”

  But she never got a chance to finish.

  “I know what a Jane Doe is, Ms. Holliday. What does that have to do with this investigation?” he asked pointedly.

  “It’s…for another story I’m working on,” she said, spouting the first thing that came to her mind.

  His expression grew even tighter as he studied her. Candy realized that most of those in the crowd were looking in her direction as well.

  Finally the chief responded, and it was clear to see he was unhappy with the question. Nevertheless, his expression told her, he’d do his best to answer it, es
pecially since he was standing out here in public, talking to all these fine people who were also asking him questions he didn’t want to answer.

  “Well, since you asked—for this other story you’re working on, of course—I’d have to say that I don’t recall burying any Jane Does in this town for quite a while, so I don’t know for sure how to answer your question. But you might want to visit Town Hall and check the burial records. That’d be the best place to start.”

  He held her gaze for another moment but finally looked away, back to the crowd. “All right, folks. That’s about it for now. I have to get back to work.”

  Candy watched him go, turning and heading into the police station, followed by a small cadre of support staff. She was tempted to follow him, since she had another question for him:

  What was in the file labeled Emma, which had been sitting on the front seat of Sebastian’s car?

  Candy suspected at least a few of the answers she sought might be found within, but surely by now the file was in a cardboard box somewhere, locked in an evidence room, out of her reach.

  Or was it?

  Her eyes followed the chief as he disappeared into the one-story brick building that served as the village’s police headquarters. She considered heading into the station, perhaps to talk to Carol at the front desk, maybe ask about her husband Phil’s lumbago. But then what? Can I please have a look around your evidence room, Carol? I’m sure the chief won’t mind. I’ll just take a quick little peek. I promise it won’t take more than a few minutes. I just want to get a look at a certain file….

  “I think he’s starting to like you.”

  Candy jumped at the low voice that spoke from behind her left shoulder. She whipped around…and her startled expression relaxed into a smile.

  It was Tristan Pruitt, looking windblown and bemused.