Town in a Pumpkin Bash

by B. B. Haywood

  Emma…

  Could she have taken the volume from the library all those years ago? How old would she have been then? How old had she been when she died? Candy had no way of knowing, since the dates of Emma’s birth and death weren’t displayed on her tombstone.

  But why not?

  Who was this ghost person, buried somewhere in an unidentified graveyard?

  Emma was at the center of this mystery, Candy felt. Find Emma’s grave, she thought, and you find the answers to everything else.

  But where was Emma buried?

  Candy resolved to continue her search the following day.

  She might even have to enlist Wanda Boyle’s help.

  As their conversation wound down, Tristan rose and told Candy he’d drive her back home. But before she left Pruitt Manor, Mrs. Pruitt insisted on showing her Abigail Pruitt’s bedroom. “It just might help you in your investigation,” the elderly woman told her.

  So with Mrs. Pruitt leading the way, and Tristan bringing up the rear, Candy climbed the main staircase to the manor’s second floor.

  “Mother chose a small bedroom for herself in the Lavender Wing,” Mrs. Pruitt said, pointing left as they reached the top of the stairs. “She slept there most nights as we children were growing up. But her primary bedroom was next to Father’s in the South Wing.” She pointed to her right and gathered her robe about her. “This way.”

  The upper hallway was carpeted and dark, lit only by a single table lamp set into an alcove halfway along. They passed by several closed doors before Mrs. Pruitt opened the last one on the left. She pointed to a final door at the end of the hall. “Father’s room is there, overlooking the sea. Mother usually slept in here.”

  Mrs. Pruitt entered the dark room and flicked on a light. “We’ve preserved it almost exactly as it was when my mother was alive,” she told Candy. “We’ve moved a few of her belongings into the attic for safekeeping, since there are times we do use this room when my granddaughters are visiting—we allow them to stay in here on special occasions—and of course I have a few of Mother’s most personal items in my own bedroom, but many of her other belongings are still here.”

  The place was tastefully decorated in muted shades of rose and gray, which had faded over the years. A large window, framed by heavy burgundy brocade curtains, looked out over a dark landscape. Candy imagined that in the daytime, one could look out that window and see part of the rear lawn and the sea off to the right. Around the room she saw touches of Victorian decoration here and there, and even a bit of whimsy in the arrangement of keepsakes and items Abigail obviously cherished. Her canopied bed stood against the right wall, opposite a small marble fireplace. Next to the bed, a cleverly disguised door led to an adjoining room, presumably that of Cornelius Pruitt, Abigail’s husband.

  The writing desk was positioned against the outside wall to the right of the window. It, too, was of Victorian design, made of a dark wood—mahogany, Candy guessed—with numerous drawers and distinctive brass hardware. Two raised rear structures, also with various drawers and shelves, were connected on top by a galleried centerpiece.

  Walking around the bed to the desk, Mrs. Pruitt pointed to a narrow drawer on the desk’s right side, under the writing surface. Candy followed her, focusing on the drawer. She’d seen something like this before. A document drawer, Mrs. Pruitt had called it. It was small, and would hold only folded documents and letters, not larger files or books. A small brass lock with a flat vertical keyhole held it tightly shut.

  Candy studied the lock for a few moments, trying to imagine what its key might look like and how large it might be. She was tempted to reach out and tug on the drawer’s single brass handle, just to verify that it indeed was locked. But she held herself back. She could see, though, that the desk itself was well built. She could see no way to break into the drawer without damaging the desk.

  She noticed that the desk’s worn leather writing surface had faded to a pale green, and that sheets of cream-colored writing paper, embossed in black with the initials AWP, still filled a small tray that sat off to one side, as if awaiting Abigail’s hand. A silver oval frame, containing a black-and-white photo of Abigail as a young woman, sat on one ledge.

  Mrs. Pruitt allowed Candy a few more moments to look around, but she saw nothing else that might help her solve the mysteries at hand. So a short time later, they headed downstairs, and after bidding farewell to Mrs. Pruitt, she climbed back into the Jaguar, and Tristan drove her home.

  “I don’t know if we actually learned much tonight,” he told her as they angled around the shoreline, following the dark, damp Coastal Loop, the Jaguar’s headlamps cutting through sea mist and trails of fog. They were the only car on the road.

  Candy had her shawl pulled tightly around her, though the heated seat beneath her kept her warm. She thought a few moments before she responded. “Well, we learned that the volume of Pruitt history is still missing, and I found out about a missing key to a drawer in Abigail’s room. And we learned that Hobbins was probably working at Pruitt Manor when a dead woman showed up in that pumpkin patch twenty years ago, and so he could have been driving that Bentley when it was spotted with its lights out.”

  “Hmm, that’s troubling,” Tristan admitted, and he fell silent, lost in his thoughts.

  Doc had left the porch light on at Blueberry Acres. Tristan pulled up in front of the house, pulled on the emergency brake, and let the motor run as again he dashed out around the front of the car to open her door.

  “Listen, thank you for having dinner with me tonight,” he said when she’d climbed out, and he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek before she could react. “I had a wonderful time.”

  “Me too,” she admitted with a smile.

  He had one more question for her as he walked her to the front porch. “What are you doing Wednesday night?”

  “Wednesday?” The question caught her off-guard, and she had to think about it for a moment. “Well, that’s Halloween, isn’t it?”

  “And it’s your birthday,” Tristan said. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. As you’ve probably heard, my family throws a party—a masquerade ball, really—at the house on Halloween night. It’s sort of a tradition around here. All the movers and shakers in town usually show up, as well as quite a few of Aunt Helen’s more famous friends—artists, writers, politicians, that sort of thing. I’d like you to come as my guest, and we can celebrate your birthday in style.”

  Candy hesitated. “Well, I…”

  “I’ve already checked with your father,” he said, “and it’s fine with him.”

  This surprised Candy. “You called Doc?”

  Tristan gave her his half smile. “Just to check to see if he had anything planned for you that evening. I didn’t want to cause any sort of conflict within the Holliday family.”

  “And what did he say?” Candy asked, curious to hear the answer.

  “Well, I’m asking you now, aren’t I?” He squeezed her hand and then started away. “I’ll tell you what. Talk to him about it and I’ll give you a call tomorrow to confirm, okay? And remember, it’s a masquerade ball.”

  “A masquerade ball? But…” Candy started to say, but she was speaking to a rapidly disappearing back. A few moments later, he’d jumped into the Jaguar and driven off.

  Doc was in his room, reading, so she didn’t disturb him. She locked up the house, turned out all the lights downstairs, and went up to her bedroom, where she got undressed, put on her pajamas, and climbed into bed. Once she was settled in, she opened the Pruitt file she’d started going through the night before, picking up where she’d left off.

  She was only a quarter of the way through when she fell asleep with papers scattered around her and across the bed.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Candy was up and out the door early, as she had a quick errand to run before she picked up Maggie and headed out to the pumpkin patch.

  On Monday mornings during the spring, summer, and into the fall, Candy usual
ly worked at the Black Forest Bakery up on Main Street. But Herr Georg had closed down his shop for the season right after Columbus Day, and Candy was still getting used to the idea of having her Mondays free.

  Of course, she had plenty to do out at the farm helping to get the fields ready for winter, and she and Maggie still had a few days left at the pumpkin patch. And she still worked part-time at the Cape Crier.

  That’s where she was headed this morning.

  Just after eight, she drove down Ocean Avenue and found a parking spot near the wood-and-glass door, identified as number 21B, that led to a set of well-worn wooden stairs and the second-floor offices of the Cape Crier.

  The place officially opened at eight thirty, but she expected to be well out of there by then. She’d arranged to take these few days off, now that they were on a biweekly schedule, and she didn’t want to have to explain why she was in the office this morning. Especially with everything that had happened out at the pumpkin patch. She knew there’d be too many questions she didn’t want to answer right now, so she wanted to avoid any conversational entanglements.

  But there was something she wanted to check—something she’d thought of the night before as she was going through the Pruitt file left behind by Sapphire Vine.

  So she planned to sneak in early, get what she needed, and leave quickly.

  As she’d expected, the place was deserted. She hurried through the rabbit warren of hallways to her office, where she flicked on the light and closed the door behind her with the side of her hip.

  Knowing exactly what she was looking for, she dropped to one knee in front of the filing cabinet in the corner and pulled open the bottom drawer labeled SV. This was the third time she’d been in this drawer in as many days, so she made quick work of it. She dug back through the files with nimble fingers, scanning the handwritten names on the labels, looking for a specific one.

  And there it was—a quarter of the way back, a file labeled Hobbins, with a smaller annotation in parentheses, (Gerald).

  She snatched it out of the drawer and dropped it into her tote bag without looking at it further. She wanted to review it when she had time to focus on it, which she’d have later in the day. And she didn’t want to get caught in her office right now. Besides, she had a schedule to keep. It was time to skedaddle.

  She made her next stop at the police station, where she read and signed the written version of the statement she’d given to Officer Molly Prospect on Saturday morning. She felt an odd vibe in the station as an assistant took her into a side room to be fingerprinted. After they were done with her, she drove to Fowler’s Corner, wiping at the ink on her fingers with a paper towel.

  Maggie was anxiously waiting for her in the driveway of her house at Fowler’s Corner, bundled up against the chilly morning. She held a commuter cup of coffee in one hand and brandished a color printed-out sheet of paper in the other. “Have you seen the headlines this morning?” she asked, waving the sheet in front of Candy’s eyes. “I just printed this off of Wanda’s blog. She linked to the Herald’s site. Can you believe it? We’re famous!”

  Candy squinted and tried to focus. “What is it?”

  “The front page. Look at that headline!”

  “I would if you’d quit waving it around.” Candy finally snatched it out of the air and held it steady for a few moments so she could read it.

  It was a printout of the front page of the Boston Herald’s website. Since the entire web page was squashed to fit onto an eight-by-eleven sheet of paper, some of the print was too small to read easily. But the headlines stood out. The large main one in the middle column read, PUMPKIN PATCH KILLER STRIKES IN MAINE VILLAGE.

  And in smaller type underneath that, BY OLIVIA MARCH.

  Candy read the first couple of sentences—Local farmers in the quiet coastal Maine village of Cape Willington were in for a pre-Halloween surprise on Saturday morning when they unearthed a dead body from beneath a pile of pumpkins in a popular local patch. The deceased was identified as…—before her gaze broke off and shifted to Maggie. “Oh, no, this isn’t good. Everyone in New England will be talking about the Pumpkin Patch Killer. We won’t be famous—we’ll be infamous!”

  “I know! I don’t know whether to be thrilled or horrified!” Maggie said, and she looked both. “I’m quoted in the third paragraph.” She pointed at the sheet of paper, then jabbed at it farther down. “Wanda’s in there too. What a terrible way to get your name in the Herald.”

  “I’m sure it makes good copy though,” Candy said, and she passed the paper back to her friend. “They’ll probably sell out on the newsstand, especially with a story like this right before Halloween. It’s custom-made for papers and the Web. The story might even go viral, given Sebastian’s quasi-celebrity status.” She put the gearshift into reverse and looked back over her shoulder. “Read it to me while I drive.”

  The quotes were fairly accurate, and Olivia provided some decent background about Sebastian. She also mentioned the fact that the murder was the latest in a string of deaths that had occurred in town over the past few years, and questioned whether they could be connected. She then quoted Chief Durr’s response when asked if Cape Willington was becoming “the murder capital of Maine,” and provided a few more details about the investigation, although there was nothing Candy hadn’t heard already.

  More importantly, no mention of Emma. No mention of a body found in that same field twenty years earlier.

  Maybe those points aren’t relevant, Candy thought. Maybe they have nothing to do with the murder of Sebastian J. Quinn. Maybe it’s something else entirely.

  Or maybe, she told herself, Olivia simply hadn’t discovered all the details yet. Maybe, like Candy, she was still digging around.

  The story ended with a few quotes from Wanda Boyle about all the recent murders, and how the latest crime wave in town had to be stopped. She concluded by suggesting that a wider investigation might be in order—though she stopped short of officially criticizing the work of the local police department.

  Given the prominence of the story in the Boston paper, Candy and Maggie weren’t quite sure what to expect out at the pumpkin patch. But despite their newfound fame, and a mention of the patch’s location in the paper’s story, traffic at the pumpkin patch was fairly light that morning, giving them time to set up shop before they had a small rush of customers around nine, many of them asking about the story.

  Wanda Boyle showed up in her minibus a little after nine thirty, hosting the first Halloween Mystery Tour of the day, but Candy noticed the bus was less than half full. A little later on, the reporter from Bangor, who introduced himself as Denny Brite, drove up with a photographer in tow. Denny asked a bunch of questions, but Candy could barely remember how she answered them, since the photographer kept snapping shots of her, Maggie, the farm stand, and the fields, distracting her.

  They left just about the time Wanda showed up with her second load around ten forty, and this time Candy was surprised to see the bus was nearly full. As the passengers spread out across the field, more vehicles started showing up—including a TV truck from Bangor and, a little later on, one from Portland.

  The word is spreading, Candy thought as she watched the activity and answered more questions than she wanted to.

  “If I’d known there were going to be cameras around,” Maggie told her at one point, “I would’ve had my hair done yesterday.”

  “You and me both,” Candy said, looking down at her farmer’s clothes. “I would’ve worn clean jeans.”

  During a lull in the action, after the bus and TV trucks had departed, Candy spotted a battered old white van coming along the unpaved road, its springs creaking. Blue letters on the side of the van announced GUMM’S HARDWARE.

  The van drove up the field’s access road close to the farm stand and the engine shut off. The driver waved. Candy waved back.

  “Mr. Gumm’s here,” she said, and went out to greet him. Maggie, who was helping a customer, just nodded in ack
nowledgement.

  Augustus Gumm, the eighty-something owner of the pumpkin patch, and the proprietor of the hardware store in town that bore his family’s name, was shaking his head and gazing out at the patch as he climbed out of the van’s front seat. “It’s a real shame,” Candy heard him say as she approached. “Just a real shame.”

  “What’s that, Mr. Gumm?”

  “Ohh”—he pointed out toward High Field—“just all that trouble you had out here a few days ago. With that body and all. And now that story about the Pumpkin Patch Killer in that Boston paper. Terrible thing.”

  “It’ll give the town a bad reputation, that’s for sure,” Candy said, “and that’s something we don’t need right now.”

  “Nosiree bob, nosiree,” Mr. Gumm said, still shaking his head. He looked over at Candy. “I would’ve been here sooner but I was out of town—visiting my sister down in Kittery. She isn’t feeling too well these days. Legs are bothering her. But I came back as soon as I could. Can’t believe it’s happening again.”

  “Again?” Candy said, emphasizing the word. She knew the story but wanted to hear Mr. Gumm’s take on it.

  “Yup, happened twenty years ago or so, I guess, sort of just like this latest death…mysterious and everything, and even right around this same time of year, if I remember correctly, sometime in the fall. We had the police out here to the field back then, too, and a reporter or two, if I remember correctly. She had no ID on her, and they said they could never match her fingerprints to anyone. They called her The Woman Without a Name—no one knew who she was.”

  “How did she die?” Candy asked, to clarify the information she’d already heard.

  Mr. Gumm had to think about that for a moment. “Don’t know if I ever heard the whole story,” he said, “but word was she just died of exposure. It was mighty cold around that time, I seem to recall. Early hard frost. Think we had an early snow that year too.”

  “And they never found out who she was?”