Town in a Sweet Pickle

by B. B. Haywood

  Wanda had copied Sapphire Vine’s personal, secret file on the Sweet Pickle Deli’s owner, obviously compiled before the paper’s onetime community correspondent had been murdered several years ago.

  “A lot of what I found in those files was outdated junk, worthless stuff,” Wanda continued, “so I tossed it. But some of it was surprisingly informational. You haven’t gotten to the photo and documents in the back yet, have you?”

  “No.” Candy’s voice sounded a little hoarse. She cleared her throat and glanced up at Wanda. “Do I want to?”

  “If you want to solve this current murder case, you do.”

  That brought Candy back to the moment. She flipped to the last few sheets in the folder, skimming through them. “And what will I find?”

  “I’ll summarize it for you, if you’d like. As we both now know, Sapphire Vine was a gossip, a spy, and a blackmailer. That’s why she was murdered five years ago. She snooped around too much. She pushed things too far. But before she died she managed to get the goods on this guy named Maurice Soufflé.”

  Suddenly curious, her anger fading, Candy asked, “And what did she discover?”

  Wanda shifted in her chair. “Well, his real name, for one thing.”

  “So Maurice Soufflé was an assumed name?”

  “Of course it was. It was just a silly invention designed to hide his true identity.”

  It took Candy a few moments, but she finally came across a document that revealed the real name of the owner of the Sweet Pickle Deli.

  “Marcus Spruell,” she read. It was from a photocopy of an old Rhode Island driver’s license issued during the nineties. The photo showed a man in his late forties or fifties, with a narrow face, thick and curly dark hair, a tight straight mouth, shadowed eyes, and a dark mole on his upper cheek just left of his nose.

  Candy had to admit she was impressed by the level of Sapphire’s research, but then again Sapphire had spent years and years compiling all this information. “How the heck did she find all this stuff?”

  “You already know the answer to that. She was nosy, tenacious—and a little crazy.”

  Candy had to agree with that statement, for she knew Sapphire’s background, and her own secret identity.

  “And what else did she find?” Candy asked, skimming through the rest of the documents.

  Wanda filled in the blanks. “That Maurice—or Marcus—was a pretty good cook, but also a low-level con artist in his younger days, bilking wealthy widows, promoting shady investments, that sort of thing. My guess is at some point he got into some pretty hot water with the wrong people down around Providence, so he decided to skip town, head north, and lay low here in Cape Willington for a while. Maybe he was even trying to turn over a new leaf, make himself legitimate. Who knows? But his past eventually caught up to him, thanks to Sapphire. She did some research and found out he’d been accused of stealing a number of things, including family recipes.”

  “Recipes?” Candy said. “What kinds of recipes?”

  “Well, the pickle recipe, for one, according to the documents in that folder. The original, which Sapphire somehow located, is attributed to a woman named Mabel Kaufman. Of course, it’s possible Mabel was related to Maurice, maybe an aunt or a maternal grandmother. There’s no way of knowing for sure. But there’s evidence he stole the recipes for a number of other dishes he used to establish his reputation. He built his deli business with them—and although some of the information Sapphire gathered was sketchy, it appeared he was trying to make some extra cash, big cash, off the recipes he’d stolen. He apparently approached some big corporation about spinning off his own product line of pickles and other related items under the Sweet Pickle Deli label.”

  “Stolen recipes,” Candy repeated. “So that’s why you grilled Julia von Fleming this morning.”

  “Exactly. Like I said, I just wondered what she’d heard. I was trying to corroborate what was in Sapphire’s files. Unfortunately, Julia didn’t seem to know anything about Maurice and his recipes.”

  The next piece of the puzzle clicked into Candy’s mind. “So Sapphire must have approached Maurice with what she’d learned and threatened to blackmail him, like she’d done to others in town. Maybe that’s why he left so suddenly, closing down the deli in the middle of the night.”

  Wanda smirked and leveled a finger at her, an orange fingernail leading the way. “Bingo.”

  “What happened after that?” Candy asked.

  Again, Wanda shrugged. “It appears that was the end of it. Sapphire lost track of him. End of the trail. No one to blackmail. You can’t use your leverage against someone you can’t find. A few months later she was dead.”

  Thoughtfully, Candy closed the folder and set it on top of her desk. She considered what she’d just learned for a long time before she finally spoke again. “Wanda, I can’t condone what you did. Photocopying Sapphire’s files without my knowledge was sneaky and underhanded. All this time, you knew what was in the bottom drawer in my filing cabinet, and yet you pretended you had no idea.”

  “What you didn’t know didn’t hurt you,” Wanda said without a degree of remorse.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “So what is the point?”

  Candy thought about that question as well. Part of her wanted to fire Wanda right then and there. What Wanda had done was a betrayal of trust—that was the point, Candy thought. But something deep inside told her it would be a mistake. Better to keep your enemies close, she told herself, although she hesitated to think of Wanda as an enemy. She was more of a nuisance than anything else, and occasionally an adversary. But she was good at what she did, and her columns in every issue of the paper certainly helped drive circulation, keeping the publication solvent. Without Wanda, the paper might no longer exist in its current printed form, and they wouldn’t be celebrating its bicentennial anniversary.

  And, Candy had to admit, Wanda’s snooping and duplicity had uncovered a critical piece of information that just might help them solve a crime.

  In the end, Candy decided to focus on the positive rather than the negative. “I’m going to try to forget what you’ve done by going behind my back and photocopying those files, at least for the moment, and focus on the problem at hand—although I think when this is over, you should burn all those files you’ve photocopied, just like I did.”

  Wanda shook her head, her mouth tight in defiance. “Not going to happen. I have a job to do. Those files are too valuable to get rid of now. And despite what you might think, they’re not all as incriminating as they might seem.”

  She pointed at the folder on Candy’s desk. “Take that one, for instance. If this whole pickle poisoning thing hadn’t happened, the information in that folder would be totally irrelevant—useless. Who would’ve cared that Maurice Soufflé was being investigated and blackmailed by a community columnist who died years ago? Absolutely no one, that’s who. And that’s what I found in most of the files I copied—disjointed facts, scribbled notes, seemingly worthless tidbits of information jotted on slips of paper. Not worth much right now, but at some point they might prove useful.”

  Candy was somewhat dismayed to find herself agreeing with Wanda. “Like now,” she said.

  “Like now,” Wanda emphasized. “So what’s our next move?”

  For a few moments they stared at each other, and neither spoke. Finally Candy picked up the folder and handed it back to Wanda. “I don’t know yet. Let me think about it.”

  Wanda took that as her cue to leave. “Okay, you’re the boss.” She stuffed the folder into her briefcase, rose quickly, and headed for the door. “Just don’t think too long, though,” she cautioned on her way out. “We have a murderer on the loose again. It might even be this Marcus Spruell character himself. So the quicker we find out what’s going on, and end this thing before someone else dies, the better.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  She’s right, Candy thought after Wanda had left, tromping back along the hallway and shuttin
g the main office door behind her. Much as she hated to admit it, Wanda, through her subterfuge, had uncovered some important information. Now she had to figure out how to use that information to uncover a murderer, before anyone else in town was harmed.

  And not just people in town. Whoever was behind the poisoned pickles had targeted people outside of Cape Willington as well.

  That got Candy to thinking. Three jars of pickles. Three possible targets. All linked to Maurice Soufflé, whom she now knew was actually a con artist named Marcus Spruell.

  What had happened to him? Where had he gone when chased out of town as a result of Sapphire Vine’s alleged attempt at blackmail? Had he sought revenge on certain people, using jars of poisoned pickles? If so, why now?

  As she’d done in the past to help organize her thoughts, she pulled a legal pad out of a drawer and started jotting down what she’d learned so far:

  Three jars of pickles had been found—one at Sally Ann Longfellow’s house, one on the pickled food table at the community cook-off, and one in a mailbox of a woman named Georgia McFee, who lived in Cherryfield, about thirty-five minutes away.

  All three jars appeared to be targeted at specific people. Julia von Fleming was convinced the jar of poisoned pickles left on the table at the cook-off had been meant specifically for her, since she’d written a negative column about the Sweet Pickle Deli a few years back, though she’d published the column under a pen name. Georgia McFee had beaten Maurice Soufflé, alias Marcus Spruell, in a private cook-off challenge held around the same time. And Maurice had been so annoyed at Sally Ann’s goats that he’d filed a complaint with the local officials. Despite her doubts, Candy had to admit that Maurice was still the prime suspect.

  However, Candy was certain she and her father, along with everyone else who had attended the cook-off contest the previous day, were still considered suspects by the police. There was even evidence against Candy and Doc, since Doc had initially spotted the jar on the table and Candy’s fingerprints were all over it. In addition, she had tried to give the tainted pickles to the three official judges for a taste test. Not good. However, she doubted Chief Durr seriously considered her or Doc a suspect, despite the evidence.

  Whoever had left the pickles on Sally Ann’s doorstep would not have known that Wanda Boyle was stopping by to pick up that jar, and Sally Ann had said she’d left out a jar of her own pickles, which had not yet been found. Candy suspected the jars had been switched, but when and by whom?

  Sally Ann still had two jars from the old Sweet Pickle Deli, kept in the back of her pantry for special occasions, but the labels on them, as well as the shape of the jars themselves, differed from the one Candy had seen yesterday in the gym. And the pickles in Sally Ann’s jars weren’t poisoned, as Candy found out when she sampled them herself. Still, Candy wasn’t quite ready to completely rule out Sally Ann as a suspect. She said she’d been out of town when the jars of poisoned pickles were found, but Candy was taking her word for it—just like she was taking Sally Ann’s word that there were still two jars from the deli left in her pantry, allegedly proving she’d left out her own jar of pickles on the stoop for Wanda, and not one from the deli, suggesting the two had been switched.

  While he’d been living in town and running the deli, Maurice Soufflé had developed a reputation as a top-level cook but also as someone who was hard to get along with, throwing customers out of his store for what everyone else considered were minor infractions. It wasn’t hard to imagine that his negative attitude could have eventually developed into a murderous one.

  From Sapphire Vine’s old file on Maurice, photocopied by Wanda, they had learned the true identity of the owner of the Sweet Pickle Deli, and that Maurice/Marcus had a previous life, one as a con artist, among other things. Again, could something that had happened in the past have driven him to target several people around the area with jars of poisoned pickles?

  Finally, the Pruitts had received a letter attempting to extort two hundred thousand dollars from them, by threatening to harm more people in town, allegedly with more jars of poisoned pickles. The letter had been mailed from Cape Willington earlier in the week, indicating that the sender had been in town at that time. Sally Ann, for instance, had surely been in town then, but what about Maurice Soufflé? Could he have mailed it? Or was someone else behind the extortion letter?

  There were other issues, she knew, though she wasn’t sure how they related to the current crime. Maurice had been a thorn in the side of Mason Flint and the village’s selectmen, she’d learned, badgering them about a permit for an outdoor dining area, for which he’d refused to pay. And he’d left behind unpaid financial obligations, including back taxes. Could that have been a motivation for murder, driven by revenge? Even Maggie had a run-in with him over his insurance policies. It seemed he didn’t have a single friend in town.

  Despite all the evidence against Maurice Soufflé, there was a possibility the jars had been left out by someone more familiar to them, someone around town, someone who had been at the cook-off contest yesterday and had an opportunity to place the jars in the locations in which they’d been found. Someone who had been in town to mail that extortion letter. But again, who? It could be just about anyone, including many of the town’s most prominent citizens.

  Then there was Marjorie Coffin’s story about the box of late entries, including possibly a jar of poisoned pickles, left on the hood of her car. She’d carried the box into the gym herself, although it had become lost in the shuffle and never found. And Candy had spotted Trudy Watkins leaving the gym yesterday at a particularly opportune time.

  Candy also jotted down a note about a woman named Gloria, who had apparently worked at the Sweet Pickle Deli when it was still open, according to the teenaged girl who worked at the pizza parlor. She’d have to talk to the manager Phil about that.

  She added another note at the bottom of the page, with a star beside it: Shadowy figure? Baby blue pickup truck? Was I being followed, or did I imagine it? She still didn’t know for sure.

  Candy read back over the list. It included everything she could remember. It was a good list, and several points jumped out at her. She’d already talked to a number of the people involved in the cook-off contest, but there were several more she needed to visit—people who might have some insight into what had happened in the gym yesterday, or who might know the whereabouts of Maurice Soufflé.

  She knew, rightfully, she’d have to share some, or all, of this information with the local police, especially the details about Maurice’s true identity. To do otherwise would be withholding evidence. But she’d been repeatedly warned to stay out of official investigations, which made her hesitate. After thinking it through, she decided she’d have to talk to Chief Durr and tell him what she’d learned. The sooner, the better. She also might be able to get a little information from him about the status of the official investigation. But first she had a few more leads to run down. Then she’d contact the chief and give him a full report.

  She turned back to her computer and searched for a phone number for Georgia McFee but came up empty. However, she was able to locate a street address. She decided she’d just have to make a quick trip up there, since it wasn’t that far, and she preferred to talk to Georgia face to face, anyway. She was in the process of checking out the quickest route to Cherryfield when the office’s front door squeaked open and slammed shut again, making her jump in her chair, and she heard the strangest of sounds in the hallway, coming straight toward her.

  THIRTY

  It was a clattering of footsteps, unlike anything Candy had heard before, a combination of heavy steps stomping toward her, accompanied by uncoordinated higher-pitched clomps that seemed to reverberate through the building. Candy thought Wanda might have returned, but this didn’t sound anything like Wanda. It was, in some way, otherworldly.

  Then she heard the forlorn bleat of an unhappy goat, and knew who it was.

  A few moments
later, Sally Ann Longfellow peered in through Candy’s open office door. She was dressed in faded dungarees that hung loosely on her, a threadbare blue flannel shirt, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. In her left hand she held a rope attached to the collar of Guinevere, her sole remaining goat, who seemed to want to be anywhere but here.

  “I saw your Jeep parked up the street. Hoped I might find you here,” Sally Ann said gruffly, without preamble. “Like I said last night, I got something I need to talk to you about.” She stepped into Candy’s office, tugging in the goat, which seemed to want to go in a different direction.

  Involuntarily Candy rose from her seat. “Sally Ann! And Guinevere! What a surprise!”

  “Told you we might stop by,” Sally Ann said, “and here we are.”

  “Yes, here you are—a little unexpected, but that’s fine. But . . . I didn’t think you’d bring the goat along.”

  Sally Ann glanced at the animal. “Didn’t want to leave her alone, after what happened yesterday. She’s been pretty depressed since you-know-who passed away.”

  “You mean Cleopatra?” Candy ventured.

  The goat bleated sadly, and Sally Ann put a shushing finger to her lips. “We don’t mention that name,” she told Candy.

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .” Candy paused, her brow wrinkling. “But a depressed goat?”

  “Animals have feelings, too, you know,” Sally Ann said in the critter’s defense.

  “Yes, I’m sure they do.” Candy tried to regroup and motioned to a chair as she ran a hand through her hair. “Well, why don’t you sit down?” she said, settling uneasily back into her own seat, hesitant to put herself down at the goat’s height.

  Sally Ann waved away the offer. “Don’t need to. Not staying long. This won’t take long.”

  “Okay, so what did you want to see me about?”

  “Got something for you.” Sally Ann reached into a back pocket of her dungarees, which looked decades old, and withdrew a twice-folded, misshapen piece of paper, soiled with bent corners. She unfolded it with thick fingers, smoothed it out against her stomach, and handed it to Candy, who took it hesitantly. She turned it in one direction. Then another. A long paragraph was written on it in an unsteady hand with heavy black ink. Candy tried to decipher the handwriting.