Most of the nonfiction consisted of biographies of celebrities and royalty. But, Candy noticed, Sapphire also had a number of books on local travel and history, including several guides to hiking and biking trails.
A bookmark was sticking out of one of them, a guide to Maine’s islands. Candy flipped it open to the bookmarked page. It was a section on the Cranberry Isles, a group of small islands, including Grand Cranberry, Little Cranberry, and several others off the coast of Mount Desert Island. A black-and-white photo on the bookmarked page showed one of the ferry boats that regularly shuttled passengers between the islands and the mainland.
Mr. Gumm’s statement earlier in the day floated through her mind: Someone told me she was one of the island people.
Island people.
Could these be the islands he’d been talking about?
She closed the book, set it aside, and continued her search.
Working her way down to the second floor, she dug through closets and searched in drawers, all the way to the back ends. She even took a few drawers completely out and flipped them over, checking to see if Sapphire might have taped the diary to the bottom of one. But she found nothing.
She searched under mattresses and in coat pockets and even tapped the floorboards in several places, checking for a possible hiding spot. She emptied out boxes and went through the contents item by item. An hour passed. Another. But she didn’t find what she was looking for. So she went down one more level, to the first floor, where she stood in the living room, surveying it.
This was where Sapphire had reached the end of her life, in the center of this room. Candy and Maggie still tended to avoid it as much as possible. At one time there’d been a masked-tape X on the floor where Sapphire’s body had fallen, but it had been removed, and the floor scrubbed, years ago. Sapphire’s rust-colored mission-style furniture set remained, but the bookshelf had been cleaned out, now holding only bric-a-brac.
They’d sold the old upright piano, and many other items, and given even more away, though they’d held on to many of Sapphire’s more personal belongings, just in case—those were the items they’d boxed away.
Candy made a cursory search, but they’d been through this room fairly extensively in the past months and years. If there had been anything that resembled a diary here, Candy or Maggie would have remembered it.
It was close to three thirty by the time she put on a kettle of water to heat and pulled a mug out of the cupboard for tea. She turned to her tote bag then and removed the files on the Pruitts and Hobbins, which she’d brought with her. She decided to finish going through them first before she gave up for the day.
Fifteen minutes later, she gave Maggie a call. “You have to come right over. I think I’ve found something.”
THIRTY-TWO
She laid out the black-and-white photographs on the kitchen table before them. “Two photos,” Candy said, “taken at different times. Both showing the same tombstone. And found in two different files.”
Maggie was munching on a bag of trail mix she’d brought with her. “Which files?”
“This one,” Candy said, pointing to the first photo she’d found, “was in a file labeled Emma, which I found in the cabinet in my office at the newspaper.”
“Right, the bottom drawer labeled SV,” Maggie said, and raised an eyebrow. “The one you swore you’d never go into again.”
“I changed my mind after I saw a similarly labeled file on the front seat of Sebastian’s car the morning after he was murdered. I figured this was an emergency, and made an exception. Anyway, this one,” she continued, pointing to the second photo, “I found in a file labeled Hobbins.”
“And did that file come from the same place as the other one?”
“Same place.”
“So Sapphire put those two photos in those two files.”
“Correcto-mundo.”
“Why’d she do that?”
“That’s exactly what I asked myself,” Candy said. “Obviously Sapphire wanted to remind herself of something she’d discovered—a link between Emma and Hobbins.”
Maggie looked uncertain. “Um, obviously.”
“But what about the Pruitts?” Candy continued, thinking out loud. “If Hobbins had something to do with Emma’s death—and I’m assuming it was her body that was found in the pumpkin patch twenty years ago—were the Pruitts also involved? And if so, how?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie said, thoughtfully chewing a few nuts and raisins. “You’re the detective. You tell me.”
“I don’t know either,” Candy admitted, “but I think Abigail’s diary is linked to all this, and the missing volume of Pruitt history as well. Exactly how all those pieces fit together, I haven’t figured out yet. But I’m working on it.”
As if demonstrating that very fact, she leaned across the table so she could get a better look at the two photos.
They were remarkably similar, though the second photo—the one she’d found at the very back of the file labeled Hobbins—was taken from a little farther away. Unfortunately, that meant the writing on the tombstone itself was still indecipherable, except for the name Emma engraved at the top. But it also meant a wider shot, so Candy could see a building in it now—at least a small part of one, a stone structure, perhaps a house, with a slate roof and white window frames.
And a small piece of ocean in the distance.
“It’s near the coast,” Candy said, leaning even closer to the photo, wishing she had a magnifying glass, “so at least that narrows down our search a little.”
“Maine has about two hundred fifty miles of coastline, as the crow flies,” Maggie said, squinting at the ceiling as if recalling the statistics from memory, “but around thirty-five hundred miles of actual shoreline, if you count all the bays and inlets and capes and such.”
When Candy gave her a questioning look, Maggie shrugged. “I just read it in a magazine article a few days ago.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Candy said, looking back down at the photo.
“Well, we don’t have to search all thirty-five hundred miles,” Maggie said. “I mean, we don’t have to search the heavily settled areas, like Kennebunkport or Old Orchard Beach or Portland. So that rules out a few dozen miles.”
“You’re not helping,” Candy said, and she lifted the photo, holding it up and angling it toward the light, so she could get a better look at it. “It’s definitely a rocky coastline—but that doesn’t help narrow it down much either, does it? I suppose I could jump on the Internet and do a quick search for coastal cemeteries. It might give me a few ideas.”
“What’s that?” Maggie asked, pointing with her pinkie to the back of the photo.
“What’s what?” Candy flipped it around.
“That smudge up there in the corner—looks like some sort of scribbling.”
“Where?” Candy realized that, in her haste upon discovering the photo in the file, she had neglected to turn it over and look at the back of it.
“There.” Maggie pointed again, jabbing her finger.
Candy squinted. She saw the spot on the back of the photo now, and studied it for a few moments. “It is writing. It’s just faint.”
“What’s it say?” Maggie asked, leaning in closer.
“I don’t know, I think”—her mouth opened slightly as she continued to try to decipher the writing—“I think it says, sked in pru file.”
“What in where?”
“Sked in pru file,” Candy repeated, her brow furrowing. “That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”
“What’s a sked?” Maggie asked.
“What’s a pru?” Candy countered.
But a moment later it dawned on her. “Schedule,” she said. “Sapphire must have written that message to herself! And she’s talking about a schedule!”
The rest of it came to her the next instant. “In the Pruitt folder.” She looked over at her friend, amazed. “Schedule in Pruitt file. You know what this means?”
“No,�
�� Maggie asked. “What?”
“It means you’ve found another clue!”
“I did!” Maggie said excitedly, but her jubilant expression changed a moment later. “But what does it mean?”
“Exactly what it says. I think I remember seeing something that matches that description.” She grabbed the Pruitt folder, flipped open the cover, and starting digging through it. “I saw it a little while ago when I was going through it, but I mistook it.”
She found what she was looking for, a torn-out page from a magazine. “It’s an article about the Pruitt Opera House—one of their plays a few years ago,” Candy said, pulling the page out from the file. “But look.”
She turned the page over. “I glanced at it but it never registered with me.” Candy pointed to a half-page ad on the other side.
“What is it?” Maggie asked, focusing her gaze on it.
“An ad for the Cranberry Isles ferry.
“The Cranberry Isles?”
“Don’t you see? That’s it! That’s the answer!”
“The answer to what?” Maggie asked.
In response, Candy flipped the black-and-white photo around again and jabbed at it with her finger. “The location of Emma’s tombstone.”
THIRTY-THREE
It all made sense now, though Maggie looked at her quizzically as Candy dashed out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the attic hideaway. A few minutes later, huffing a little, she returned with a book in her hand.
“I found this earlier when I was going through some of Sapphire’s things upstairs,” Candy said as she walked back into the kitchen. “It’s a guide to Maine’s islands. Sapphire had a page bookmarked—a description of the Cranberry Isles. She actually had this all figured out. She knew that Emma was one of the island people, just like Mr. Gumm told me this morning. That’s where Emma’s from. One of the Cranberry Isles. She was one of the island people. And that’s where she must be buried. On an island.”
“Yes, but which one?” Maggie asked as she looked back at the photos, her gaze zeroing in on them. “How many of them are there in that group? Five or six?”
“I don’t know, something like that.” Candy studied the photos along with her friend for several moments, her gaze shifting back and forth, searching both for any clue. But the first photo showed only the tombstone and a small section of the cemetery—nothing of the building or the surrounding landscape—and the other showed only a small portion of the stone building and a glimpse of the ocean through the trees.
“Can’t tell from those.” She laid the book out on the table beside the photos, open to the spread Sapphire had bookmarked. Then she started paging forward and backward through the book, searching for anything that caught her eye.
And she found it fairly quickly. “Here it is,” Candy said, her finger skimming halfway down one of the pages. Sapphire had bracketed a paragraph in pencil. Candy read it quickly. “It talks about Wren Island. Is that one of the Cranberries?”
Maggie picked up the ferry ad, which included a small map of the isles. “Yup, here it is.” She pointed at the smallest of the islands, angling the map toward Candy so she could see it.
The two largest islands—Grand Cranberry and Islesford, also known as Little Cranberry—were on the southern side of the small group of islands, while several others, including Bear and Wren, were to the north, closer to the southern tip of Mount Desert Island.
Candy took the ad from Maggie and studied it. The Cranberry Isles were served by both a mail boat, which set out several times a day from Northeast Harbor, and by the Cranberry Cove Ferry, which set out daily from Southwest Harbor. The mail boat from Northwest Harbor was probably closer to them, Candy figured. Since it was off-season, there were fewer trips per day. Other than an early-morning trip, the mail boat set out for the isles at eleven A.M. and at two and four thirty in the afternoon.
“How far are we from Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island?” Candy wondered out loud.
Maggie shrugged. “You have to go up to Ellsworth first, and then south. Maybe an hour or so?”
Candy checked her watch. It was nearly four o’clock. There was no way she’d make the last ferry today. “It’ll have to be the eleven A.M. trip tomorrow then.” She looked over at her friend. “Want to go on a boat ride?”
In response, Maggie held up her hand and waved it. “Thanks, but no. Like I said a while ago, me and the ocean don’t get along well. Gives me the heaves. But you go—and have a good time. I’ll keep an eye on the pumpkin patch for you.”
Candy nodded and returned her attention to the photos. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find a cemetery on an island that small. How many can there be?”
“Maybe the captain would know,” Maggie said, waving toward the photographs, “if you show him those.”
Candy nodded and sighed. “I just hope this isn’t another wild-goose chase, because I’d sure like to figure out what’s going on. But whatever happens, tomorrow will certainly be an interesting day.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Finn called the following morning at eight, waking her. “Got some news,” he said without introduction.
Groggy-eyed and dry-mouthed, Candy inelegantly swiped a hand across her face. She and Maggie had downed a bottle of wine with their dinner of spaghetti, salad, and fresh-baked garlic bread the night before as they’d discussed the events of the day, and Ben had called her, and then Tristan had called, and she’d fallen into bed later than she’d planned.
She pressed the phone to her ear, still under the covers. “Finn? What is it?”
He hesitated, uncertain. “Are you sure you’re awake? I thought farmers got up early.”
“I’m up, I’m up,” she said, throwing aside the covers and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold. Her toes searched for her slippers. “I have to get moving anyway. What’s up?”
Reassured, he plunged ahead. “Well, remember that file you asked me about a couple of days ago? The one you said you saw on the front seat of Sebastian’s car?”
“Yeah, I remember.” If she hadn’t been fully awake before, she was instantly alert now. “What have you heard about it?”
“Well, according to my source, the police investigators have taken a look at it, but all they found inside was a bunch of documents—paperwork for some woman named Emma Smith. Most of it dated back in the early nineties. It listed her home address as some place in Lewiston—an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity—nuns. I wrote down the name of it somewhere if you want it. Anyway, most of the paperwork consisted of files from a mental institution in Portland. It appears this Emma person was a resident there. The local authorities are checking into it. Just thought I’d let you know.”
“A resident in a mental institution? Why would Sebastian be interested in that?”
“Good question.”
And then, in an instant, something clicked in Candy’s brain, as a piece of the puzzle dropped into place.
Sapphire Vine.
Hadn’t Sapphire been in a mental institution in Portland? When had that been?
“Finn, can you give me the exact dates on that paperwork. I want to check something.”
“You think there’s a connection to the murder?”
“I don’t know,” Candy said. “It’s just a hunch.”
“You get those too?”
“All the time,” Candy admitted.
He told her he’d call her back as soon as he had the information, and she dashed off to grab her computer.
She logged on remotely to the newspaper’s server, which gave access to back issues, as well as her own password-protected personal folders and files, stored on the server’s hard drive. After conducting a global search, she found what she was looking for.
Sapphire Vine’s obituary.
Candy had written it herself for the newspaper, a week after Sapphire’s passing, but she couldn’t remember exactly what she’d written, so she scanned the final version of the obituary first. Almost at
once she knew that the specific information she sought was not there, since she’d avoided writing about certain aspects of Sapphire’s life—certain aspects that even now were unknown by the general public, due to Sapphire’s dark past. But she’d kept her notes for the obituary in a separate document in the same folder, and searched that next.
She finally found what she wanted.
About two-thirds of the way down through her notes were the dates that Sapphire Vine, as a young woman, had spent in an institution in Portland.
This information had first come to her from Cameron Zimmerman, in the days after Sapphire’s murder. During a tense encounter at a cabin by the sea, he had filled them in on this particular part of Sapphire’s background—unknown to any of them except Cameron until that moment. Days later, after they’d unmasked Sapphire’s killer, Candy had taken it upon herself to follow up on Sapphire’s past, contacting the institution in Portland and gathering the information, which she had dutifully recorded—and then filed away.
And it was still there: Sapphire had been in the institution in Portland from the summer to the late fall of 1991.
A few minutes later, when Finn texted her, she had a match: Dates of Emma’s stay at the mental institution: April ’91–Jan ’92, read his message.
Bingo.
Sapphire Vine and the woman previously known only as Jane Doe, and now almost certain to be Emma Smith, had been in the same place at the same time in the early nineties.
Candy pondered what she’d learned as she jumped into the shower, got dressed, checked the chickens, and made herself a toasted bagel for breakfast.
Then she packed for her journey. She’d switched out her tote bag for a dark green daypack, and checked it carefully to make sure she had everything she needed, including a small digital camera, her recorder, notebooks, phone, and other gear. She threw in a banana, a sleeve of wheat crackers, and some hard cheese, in case she couldn’t find a place to eat. She also dropped in a map she’d found in Doc’s office, hidden among the clutter; it gave her a fairly detailed look at the Maine coastline. And finally, she slid in a color printout of Wren Island, which she’d studied from the air on Google maps. The resolution wasn’t great, and the quality of her printer made it look even worse, but she could make out eight or ten houses on the island, and several docks. One or two of the buildings could have a cemetery attached—she’d have to check when she got there to make certain. It looked like there were no roads on the island because there were no cars—only footpaths for people and bicycles. She’d be walking, so she wore her sneakers, and took along a Windbreaker, hat, and gloves, since she knew it would be cooler out on the open water.
Town in a Pumpkin Bash Page 18
