Town in a Blueberrry Jam (19 page)

Candy and Maggie examined these items curiously, then moved on to the piano. A dozen or so old family photos in antique silver frames were lined up along its top. “I wonder why Sapphire never told us anything about her family,” Maggie said softly.

“Maybe because we never asked.”

“Good point. Look, here’s a photo of her when she was younger—about twenty years old or so, I’d say. Handsome guy with her.”

Candy studied it, focusing in on the innocent young couple, who in the photo appeared to be extremely happy. Sapphire’s hair was longer, her face more cherubic, and she looked heavier than she had in more recent days. The young man she stood next to was tall and lean with dark curly hair. He had an easy smile and wore an old gray sweatshirt with the letters
USM
on it in faded blue. “I wonder what happened to him.”

Maggie shook her head. “She probably chased him away with her sharp wit.”

“Yeah, sure.”

When they found nothing else of interest on the first floor, they moved to the second. There they found another bathroom and three bedrooms, two of which were furnished and one empty except for some boxes, an ancient weight-lifting set, some old pieces of furniture, and assorted piles of clothes and books stacked in haphazard piles.

Candy pointed to the furnished bedrooms. “You take the one on the right, I’ll take the other. Check everything.”

Maggie did as instructed. She searched through dresser drawers, the nightstand drawer, an oak hope chest, even the storage boxes under the bed.

“Nothing!” she called out.

Candy walked back out of the other bedroom. “Nothing in there either. She must keep her papers around here somewhere. There’s got to be a workspace or something—someplace where she writes and keeps her files.”

“Maybe in the basement,” Maggie suggested.

“Maybe.” Candy shined her light around. She turned a complete circle, then walked back in and checked all the bedrooms. She seemed to be searching for something.

“What’s wrong?” Maggie hissed.

Candy shook her head. “Where are the stairs to the top floor?”

“The what?”

“The top floor. Remember that light we saw in the window? Well, there’s no light on here. There must be another floor above this one. Look around for a set of stairs.”

“It’s probably right here,” Maggie said, motioning to a door that led to the space over the lower staircase. But when she opened the door, she found that it was only a closet, stuffed with blankets, a vacuum cleaner, old shoes, and more boxes. “Nope, that’s not it.”

“Hmm. There must be a way to get to the top level—maybe in a closet or behind a closed door. Let’s look.”

So they drifted off, walking the floor, exploring the bedrooms again, searching everywhere. But they found nothing.

“That’s so weird,” Candy said as they met back in the hallway. “I know I saw a light in that top window, but how do we get up there?”

“Maybe there’s a secret door,” Maggie guessed.

“Hmm. Could be. This place must be a hundred years old, at least. It’s possible they could have put a secret door or panel someplace. Let’s look again, more carefully this time.”

“Okay. You take that side of the hallway, and I’ll look over here.”

The minutes passed as they each searched a room, which wasn’t easy, since they had only their flashlights to see by. Candy desperately wanted to flick on an overhead light but knew that was taboo. She rapped on the walls with her knuckles, listening for any hollow sound. But then she realized that it all sounded the same to her. Even if she found a secret door, she didn’t know what it would sound like.

She decided to check the closet more carefully. She guessed that she was in the spare bedroom, since it was sparsely decorated, and Sapphire’s winter clothes were hanging from the bar in the closet. The shelf above was filled with boxes.

Then she looked again, shining the light around. The shelf was only half-full, she saw now. And the far end of the shelf was missing.

Curious, Candy walked to that end of the closet and shined her light up along the wall. That’s when she noticed a narrow wooden ladder leaned up against the back wall of the closet. Her eyes followed the ladder up to the ceiling.

Then she saw it—a trap door.

“Found it!” she called out as loudly as she dared.

She heard footsteps approaching at a run. “What? Let me see!”

“Right there. Look.”

Maggie shone her light up with Candy’s. “Ooh, yes, that’s it! A trap door. How clever! I bet the police didn’t see that! Who’s going up first?”

“I don’t suppose you want to volunteer?”

Maggie gave her a look. “Just be careful. I’ll watch your back.”

“Thanks. That makes me feel
so
much better. Here, hold this.”

Candy passed her flashlight and the tote bag to Maggie, then grabbed on to one of the ladder’s rungs. She put a foot on a lower rug, testing it carefully to make sure it would hold her weight, then hoisted herself up slowly, a rung at a time, until she was high enough to reach the trap door in the ceiling. Holding onto the ladder with one hand, she pushed up on the trap door with the other. It gave way easily, opening a few inches with a low creak.

“I’m going up,” she called back down in a loud whisper. “Pass the flashlight to me when I get up there.”

“Roger that,” Maggie called efficiently.

Candy pushed the trap door all the way open and saw a faint glow of light filtering down into the closet. Grabbing the wood frame of the opening, she pulled herself up and into the room above.

TWENTY-THREE

She sat for a moment on the edge with her legs dangling down and looked around warily. But it was just as she expected—a cozy attic hideaway that had been Sapphire’s secret retreat.

Because of the size of the trap door, it must have been difficult to get big pieces of furniture up here, so what Candy saw was a makeshift arrangement. A narrow folding table, pushed into one corner, made for a desk. The room also contained a trio of fold-up-style director’s chairs, a small wicker chair, several cinder-block-and-board shelves lined with books, a portable TV set on top of a green plastic crate, a CD player/radio on the floor beside it, a few tall boxes that had been turned upside down to serve as end tables, and—strangely enough—a thin twin-sized mattress laid on the floor along one wall, with a pillow and blankets scattered across it.

“Let me see, let me see!” Maggie exclaimed excitedly as she came up the ladder behind Candy, handing up the tote bag and flashlight. “What have you found?”

“It’s Sapphire’s secret lair.”

“The center of the spider’s nest. This just keeps getting better and better.”

Candy swung her legs up underneath her, rose—and immediately bumped her head on the sloped ceiling. They were at the very top of the house, and though the ceiling was high enough in the center of the room that she could stand, it sloped down sharply at the sides.

There was a small window that looked out over the backyard, dark now except for a small patch faintly illuminated far below. An antique floor lamp with a low-wattage bulb had been left on; that had been the light they had seen from the yard.

Candy crossed to the folding table that served as a desk. It was a primitive setup, but everything Sapphire had needed appeared to be here. On the table was a fairly new notebook computer. Candy spotted a phone line that ran down through a crude hole cut in a corner of the floor, probably used for an Internet connection, though she saw it was now unplugged; Sapphire had apparently upgraded to wireless. The desktop had been kept nice and neat, as expected of Sapphire. Papers, files, and magazines were carefully organized in a variety of plastic desktop trays and sorters. Sharpened pencils and pastel-colored pens were stored in old coffee cups that served as pencil holders. Another address book—this one with a glossy pink cover decorated with stickers of ice cream cones and flowers—sat to one side of the computer. A Rolodex nearby looked as though it had been frequently used and regularly updated. The handset of a wireless phone sat beside the address book.

No one could ever say Sapphire had been a slouch when it came to organization.

A two-drawer cardboard file cabinet—one of those cheapie jobs you could buy at an office supply store—sat to one side of the desk. Slipping off her Polartec gloves and setting them down on the floor with the tote bag and flashlight, Candy dropped into the chair behind Sapphire’s desk and gingerly pulled open the file cabinet’s top drawer. It was heavy and stuffed full, just as she suspected. She started fingering her way back through the files.

“Would you look at this?” Maggie asked from the other side of the room. She had wasted no time in exploring the surroundings.

Candy turned and looked up. Maggie held a photo album open in her hands. She was paging through it. “There are pictures of her in here going back to when she was a baby. And look at this.” She closed the album and held it out so Candy could see it.

Along the bottom right corner of the album cover, in gold block letters, was the inscription
Susan Jane Vincent.

Candy’s brows knit together. “Who’s Susan Jane Vincent?”

“Don’t you get it?” Maggie’s eyes were huge. “It’s Sapphire! That must be her real name! She must have changed it somewhere along the line.”

“Well I’ll be damned.”

“You didn’t think Sapphire Vine was her real name, did you? I always suspected she must have changed it at some point, maybe to hide a sordid past. And here’s the proof.”

“Susan Jane Vincent, huh? So she’s just an ordinary plain Jane after all.”

“I wonder if the police know about this,” Maggie said absently to herself as she paged through the album.

Candy looked around the room with fresh eyes. “They might have discovered her real name by now, but my guess is they haven’t found this place yet. They must have missed it when they searched the house.”

Maggie set the album aside and looked over at Candy. “Are we going to tell them?”

Candy shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Keep looking. See what else you can find.”

“Right, Chief!” Almost immediately Maggie chimed up again. “Here’s something.” She reached toward a book on a narrow shelf, pulling it out and holding it up, just as she had with the album.

“I can’t see it from here,” Candy said, squinting from her spot across the room, so Maggie walked over and placed it in her hands.

Candy realized after a moment that she had seen the book before—or one just like it. She turned it sideways and read the gold-lettered title on the spine. “
The Bell of Chaos
.”

“By none other than that great peacock himself, Sebastian J. Quinn.”

Candy tilted her head thoughtfully as she flipped through the pages. “Why would Sapphire have this?”

“Maybe she’s a lover of bad poetry.”

“Or maybe she was doing research on the judges.” As Candy flipped through it, the book’s pages fell open to a section in back, revealing a yellowed newspaper clipping tucked inside. “What’s this?” Curiously she pulled it out and unfolded it.

Maggie crowded in next to her, reading over her shoulder. After a moment she said, “It looks like an obituary.”

“It is.” Candy scanned down through the clipping. “Somebody named David Squires. Looks like he died in a car accident. Almost twenty years ago, according to the date.”

“A friend of Sapphire’s?”

Candy shrugged, and started folding the clipping back up, then stopped. Suddenly curious, she unfolded it again, this time studying it more closely. She pointed with her pinky at the faded photo of David Squires that accompanied the article. “Does he look familiar to you?” He was a handsome, curly haired young man wearing a coat and tie; the photo had obviously been taken for his high school yearbook, when he had been a senior.

Maggie leaned in closer, scrutinizing the photo. After a few moments her face lit up. “He’s the same kid we saw in the photo downstairs with Sapphire!”

Candy nodded. “I think you’re right.”

“So now we know what happened to him,” Maggie said softly.

“That we do.” Candy finally folded up the newspaper clipping, placed it inside the book, and laid it on the desktop. “So that’s one mystery solved—sort of. But there are plenty more that need figuring out. Let’s keep looking.”

“Righto!” As Maggie bounced away to continue her snooping, Candy turned back to the cardboard filing cabinet. She took a moment to orient herself, glancing at the labels on the manila folders. Yes, she realized almost immediately, these were all the files she had been seeking.

Toward the front she found a file devoted to each of the Blueberry Queen Pageant contestants, including Amanda. Maggie would want to see that one. Candy pulled it out and set it on top of the makeshift desk, beside the copy of Sebastian J. Quinn’s book of poetry.

Behind the contestants’ files were a thick file on Mrs. Pruitt, and a separate, much thinner one for Hobbins the butler.
Those two files will bear checking out later,
Candy thought.
Probably some real interesting stuff in there.
She pulled them out as well.

Paging on back, she came to a file on Jock Larson. That caught her attention. What had Sapphire known about Jock? Probably a lot, Candy guessed. She pulled it out and flipped open the cover. Inside she found a stack of lined yellow pages filled with Sapphire’s neat handwriting, and long lists of names, dates, times, addresses, phone numbers, license plate numbers, family histories, even notes on what Jock and his various female companions had been wearing when they had been spied upon by Sapphire. Candy thumbed randomly back through the pages, spotting a vaguely familiar name here and there, though most of the notes seemed to predate her arrival in Cape Willington. The most recent entry was dated about six months earlier.

Failing to find anything particularly revealing, she was about to flip the folder closed when she noticed a small plastic ziplock bag tucked in the back. It looked empty, but when Candy lifted it out and gingerly held it up to the light, she saw that it contained a few strands of long white hair.

She puzzled over that for a moment, then placed the bag back in the folder, closed it, and set it aside with the others, planning to examine it more closely later. For now, she turned her attention back to the file cabinet. She continued on toward the back, her fingers tugging at the well-worn manila folders, glancing at the names on the neatly hand-printed labels. There were no other files on her or Doc, or on Maggie, thank goodness, but she found another one on Cameron, which she pulled out. A bit further on, she found one on Ben Clayton, which she also removed, thinking it could make interesting reading. No doubt Sapphire had collected a few tasty secrets about tall, handsome Ben.

At the very back she found a folder devoted to each of the Blueberry Queen Pageant judges, including Oliver LaForce, the owner of the Lightkeeper’s Inn, and even one on Sebastian J. Quinn. And at the very back, a thick file on Herr Georg.

Hesitating just a moment, Candy pulled the file out and flipped open the cover. More e-mails to and from Sapphire and BAK1946—obviously Herr Georg. These were more direct and threatening than the others Candy had seen. She shuffled back through the folder. Obscure newspaper clippings, apparently decades old. Fuzzy photocopies of what looked like birth records in German. And then something that surprised her: documents that looked like genealogical and military records, some with the swastika stamped ominously at the top of the page.

As she worked her way back through the documents, Candy’s dread grew. She wondered how Sapphire had gotten her hands on all this material—and if, finally, here was a real motive for murder. It all began to make sense. If Sapphire, with her relentless digging, had turned up some dark secret from Herr Georg’s past, had she used that knowledge to blackmail him? And had that driven him to the unthinkable?

Candy shuddered, knowing what her next step would have to be.

She was still scanning the documents when Maggie spoke out in shock. “Oh my God!”

Candy started, her gaze shooting to Maggie. “What? What’s wrong?”

Maggie was standing beside the twin mattress, bending over it. She held up a discarded Phish T-shirt and a well-worn Red Sox baseball cap. “Cameron was here!”

“What?”

She shook the items she held, the distress evident on her face. “These belong to Cameron!”

“Cameron who?”

“Our Cameron!
My
Cameron. Cameron Zimmerman!”

Candy shook her head. “That’s crazy. You’re jumping to conclusions. Those clothes could belong to anyone.”

“They belong to
Cameron
. I’ve seen him
wearing
them. Plus, his
initials
are on the headband inside the cap.”

Candy shook her head in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense. What would they be doing up here? You think Sapphire stole them from him?”

“No! Don’t you see? Cameron was
here
!” Maggie pointed emphatically to the bed. “He’s
slept
here!”

“Here?” Candy’s gaze was drawn inexorably to the bed. “But why would he . . . ?”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “Don’t you get it?”

“Get what?”

“It’s simple! Cameron and Sapphire were having an affair!”