Town In a Lobster Stew (11 page)

“What’s going on?” Candy called out her rolled-down window as she drove past.

“Just keep moving, ma’am. We have to keep this area clear.”

As she passed by the commotion at a crawl, she noticed most of the attention seemed to be focused on the Stone & Milbury office. Through the front windows, Candy could see several officers inside.

She also could see Maggie talking frantically to one of the policemen, her arms waving dramatically in the air.

“Oh my heavens,” Candy said to herself as the car behind her honked its horn and the officer waved again for her to drive on past. She glanced up at her rearview mirror, giving the driver behind her a dirty look. “Okay, I’m going, I’m going.”

There were no open parking spots along Ocean Avenue, but she found one once she turned onto Main Street, across from Duffy’s Main Street Diner. She scooted into the spot, slapped the gearshift into park, pulled heavily on the emergency brake, and unlocked her seat belt, then jumped out of the Jeep, pulling her purse with her. She ran along the sidewalk on Main Street, turned left at the corner, and headed down Ocean Avenue to see if Maggie needed her help.

Halfway down the street, several officers were trying to keep the crowd back, but Candy flashed her business card. “I’m with the
Cape Crier
! I’m a reporter!” she told one of the officers. A moment later she realized she knew him. “Officer Martin. It’s me, Candy Holliday. You have to let me in there.”

He gave her a skeptical look. “Can’t right now, Candy, unless you have business inside.”

“My friend’s in there! Maggie! You know her!” she added frantically, pointing at Stone & Milbury’s window front. “She . . . she needs her medicine. She asked me to bring it to her.” To prove her point, she started digging into her purse. “I’ve got it right here somewhere. She really needs it.”

Officer Martin studied her for a few more moments before skeptically waving her through. “All right. But make it quick. And try not to get in the way.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you so much!” She patted him on the shoulder as she raced past and through the office’s front door.

Inside, it was strangely quiet, compared to the noisy activity on the street. Three men in dark suits stood to one side, talking softly to each other. A few employees meandered around, shocked looks on their faces. “Where’s Maggie?” Candy asked. “Is she hurt? What’s going on?”

An older male employee, wearing a white shirt and a tie, pointed to one of the interior offices. “She’s in there. She’s pretty upset.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Candy asked again, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She dashed into the office.

Maggie was sitting in an office chair, sobbing. Another man in a dark suit was sitting beside her, talking quietly to her.

Candy crossed the room. “Maggie, are you okay?”

Her best friend looked up. Her eyes were watery, and her mascara had run. She sat with her head and shoulders slumped forward, and her arms and legs folded together, as if she were a schoolkid waiting to see the principal. “Oh, Candy,” she said, her voice quavering.

“Maggie.” Candy knelt in front of her and took one of her hands. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Did something happen?”

Maggie wiped at her tears and nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Are you okay?”

Maggie shook her head and started crying again.

“For heaven’s sake, tell me what’s going on.”

Maggie blubbered, her lips trembling, but finally she got the words out. “Oh, it’s . . . it’s Mr. Milbury,” she said as she looked over at the man in the suit seated next to her.

The man gave her a questioning look. After a moment, he nodded. “All right. I’ll let you two alone for a couple of minutes. But I need your statement, Mrs. Tremont. I’ll be right over here when you’re ready to talk.” He rose and walked out of the room.

Candy dropped into his vacated seat. “Maggie, tell me what’s going on. Are you in trouble?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie wailed, the tears flowing again.

“Why, what’s happened? Please tell me.”

It took Maggie a few moments, but finally she was able to get the words out. “It’s . . . it’s Mr. Milbury,” she repeated. “They say . . . they say he was embezzling from the company. They say he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

She paused as another deep sob swept through her, and her shoulders shuddered.

“They say . . . they say they’re going to close the company down. Oh, Candy,” she blubbered as the tears started flowing again, “I’m out of a job!”

Henry “Doc” Holliday snapped the morning edition of the
Bangor Daily News
and expertly folded it back on itself, so he could continue reading the front-page story, which ran over to the inside.

“It’s a mess, all right,” he said with a shake of his head. “It looks like old Milbury was pocketing all the money paid to his company by individuals and companies for their insurance premiums.” He paused, his eyes running down the columns of copy in the paper. “In some cases he even issued fake policies. It’s actually a pretty clever scheme. That’s how he bought himself that boat, I guess. And made that addition to his house. And paid for all those vacations to Africa and the South Pacific.” He paused again, still reading. “They’re saying it’s a federal crime.”

“Dad, that’s terrible.” Candy stood by the stove, waiting for the last batch of pies to finish baking. She’d been up since six that morning, making pies for Melody’s Café, as she’d been doing for the better part of a year, to make extra money. So far today she’d baked four—two cherry and two pecan. In a few months, when the crops started ripening in late summer, and the trees grew heavy with fruit in the fall, she’d switch to making fresh blueberry and apple pies.

“Looks like the state and federal attorney general offices are all over it,” Doc continued, his nose still buried in the paper. “Apparently, though, it was a local postal inspector who figured out what was going on.”

Candy shook her head in amazement. “How did he ever think he’d get away with it?”

Doc folded the paper back together, tossed it on the table, and took a sip of his coffee. He was looking a little better lately, Candy thought absently as she glanced at him. His face wasn’t so thin anymore, and his eyes seemed brighter than last summer. He’d been more active lately too. He even appeared to walk with a bit of a bounce in his step on some days, his limp almost completely disappearing.

It’s the spring . . . warmer weather
, Candy thought, watching him.
It lifts the spirits of everyone in town.

“That’s the thing about criminals,” Doc said, leaning back in his chair and interlocking his hands behind his head, as if he were some great pontificate offering sage wisdom for the masses. “They always think about the benefits but never the consequences. Milbury’s been living high on the hog for a lot of years. Now he’s got to pay for it. He’ll go to jail for a long time.”

“And what happens to Maggie?” Candy asked, genuinely worried.

Doc shrugged. “She’ll just have to look around for another job, I guess.”

Candy grabbed a couple of pot holders and opened the oven door. “It couldn’t come at a worse time for her. Amanda graduates in a couple of weeks, property taxes are due next month, and Ed . . . well, she’s having a rough time with Ed too. I’m worried about her, Dad.”

“Yeah, I know, me too,” Doc said with a sigh. “But we’ve all got our burdens to bear. At least she doesn’t have to worry about mummy berry destroying her crops and whether the bees will disappear overnight.” He rose and looked out the kitchen window at the blueberry fields behind the house. “It’s getting tough for all of us, pumpkin. There’s a lot to worry about these days.”

“You got that right,” Candy said as she started placing the pies on cooling racks she had set out on the counter. “But we’re making it okay, Dad, aren’t we?”

He shrugged. “For now. But this gentleman-farmer thing is a bit tougher than I originally anticipated—especially at my advanced age. It’s starting to wear me out.”

“What do you mean? I thought you loved the healthy lifestyle—being outdoors and all that.”

“Yeah, I do,” Doc admitted, “but I’m not getting any younger. We both know we can’t go on like this forever. Sooner or later we’ll have to move on.”

“Dad, I wish you’d stop talking like that.”

“No, I mean it,” Doc said firmly. “I’ve been thinking maybe I should retire to a condo somewhere in Florida, something like that, start taking it easy.”

Candy laughed. “Yeah, right. I can picture you down there in Florida, drinking cocktails with little umbrellas in them and playing shuffleboard with all the old geezers.”

She closed the oven door with a knee and tossed the pot holders on the counter. “You’d go stir-crazy down there and you know it. Besides, you love this place, don’t you? It’s what you always wanted. You’d miss it if you sold it, wouldn’t you?”

Doc turned toward her. “Sure I’d miss it. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep up with it.”

“Well, you’ve got help, don’t you?”

Doc gave her a fatherly look. “Of course I do, pumpkin, and you’ve been doing all you can around here. But you’ve also been kinda busy these days, what with the newspaper job and the pies and the bakery and everything else you’ve got going on. You’ve got a life of your own to live. You’ve got things to do. You don’t want to be stuck on this farm forever, do you?”

He gave her a serious look. “Do you?”

“Dad.” Candy let out a breath and put her hands on her hips. “We’ve had this conversation before, remember? Several times, in fact. You know how I feel about this place, and this town. I’m not going anywhere—at least not for a while. So we’ll just have to do the best we can. We got a good start with the vegetable gardens, and we’ll finish them up next week. And the fields are in pretty good shape. If we need more help, maybe we should hire someone.”

“Hire someone? Like who? And how would we pay for it?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying. We have options. So if you’re worrying about the farm, we’ll talk about it and see what we can figure out. We’ll be fine. You’ll see. But right now,” she said, picking up her purse and car keys, which had been sitting on the kitchen table, “I have to go. I’ll be at the bakery ’til noon, then I gotta swing back by the house and pick up the pies so I can drop them off at Melody’s. After that, I’m going to stop by Maggie’s to check on her. And then I have to get ready for my date with Ben tonight.”

“How’s that going?” Doc asked as she headed for the door.

She paused halfway out. “With Ben? It’s going fine, Dad. Are you playing poker with the boys tonight?”

That made Doc brighten. “Sure am. Looking forward to it. Robbie’s sitting in with us again. That’s always fun.”

“The teenager?”

“He’s college age,” Doc corrected, “and he knows what he’s doing. He’s been playing in some high-stakes games up near Bangor but says he’s trying to hone his skills, so he sits in on our game with us old guys to see if he can pick up anything. And we’ve probably taught him a thing or two.”

“Well, you boys have fun. Try to go easy on the kid.” She headed out the door and walked to the Jeep.

Traffic on the Coastal Loop seemed heavier today as she drove into town. Tourists and seasonal folks were flooding in for the holiday weekend, which would be good for local businesses like Herr Georg’s Black Forest Bakery. Candy had been helping out periodically at the bakery for the past few years, but Herr Georg had recently hired her on as a regular part-time seasonal employee. She worked at the bakery Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, and usually helped out on Saturdays as well, though she’d taken off tomorrow so she could cover the Lobster Stew Cook-off at the Lightkeeper’s Inn.

As she drove, the conversation with Doc lingered in her mind. She had to admit, he was right. A lot had happened over the past year, and her life was becoming busy. And to be honest, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She loved being a blueberry farmer, working in the fields and taking care of the gardens. And she loved living in Maine. But she had to admit there were times she felt she needed something else.

In her previous life, working for a successful marketing firm that served the top high-tech companies in Boston, she’d been constantly on the go—until everything had come crashing down around her. By retreating here to Blueberry Acres and Cape Willington in Downeast Maine, she’d been able to start putting the pieces of her life back together.

She’d been happy with her simple life as a farmer. But that all changed last summer, when two murders had rocked the town, and she’d found herself deeply involved in solving them.

At the same time, several opportunities had come her way, and now she seemed to be spending less and less time on the farm. That’s what had Doc worried, she knew. For the past few years, they had run the farm together. Though he had originally bought Blueberry Acres for himself, Doc had grown used to sharing the work with her. Now, most of the workload was once again falling on Doc’s shoulders—at a time when most men had retired and spent their days fishing and playing with their grandchildren . . .