Town in a Strawberry Swirl (Candy Holliday Mystery) (4 page)

Leaving the village behind, Candy joined a stream of cars that followed the narrow two-lane road as it meandered along the coastline, winding past beach cabins, gray-sided bungalows, an occasional barn, and a few old open-mouthed garages that stored ancient lawn furniture and unused croquet sets, garden hoses, and old car parts. The road curved around a shallow inlet and dipped through a low spot beside the ocean before rising through a stand of thin pines and coastal shrubbery, still showing some of its spring green, though the color would wash out to a dull gray-green by midsummer.

In short order most of the cars in front of her slowed and pulled into dusty dirt driveways, or angled off onto side lanes, so that by the time she reached the turnoff on the right that led to Blueberry Acres, she had the road mostly to herself. Rather than head toward home, she continued straight ahead, along the coast, as she checked her watch again and nudged up the needle on the speedometer, though it was hard to get any vehicle much above forty or fifty miles an hour on these back rural roads.

The morning was surprisingly bright and clear. Spring in Maine was a tenuous thing, or so Doc had told her on numerous occasions. At times it played havoc with the crops. April could often be warm—into the seventies or even eighties—causing plants to send out early shoots and buds, cautiously testing the weather. But May could easily turn cold and rainy, and the overcast days could carry on for weeks without a break. The sun would disappear from the sky and the crops would become dormant, caught mid-bud, awaiting the return of spring warmth, which never quite seemed to arrive. Cabin fever often set in. If they were lucky, spring would finally show up around Memorial Day, when they’d dip their toes into the cold ocean water for a few moments to officially welcome the season.

Weather like that made her appreciate days like this even more. For the past week or two they’d had mostly warm sunny days, cool nights, and a reasonable amount of rain, often at night—good for growing berries. The fields out at Blueberry Acres were ripening nicely, and they’d have a good crop this year, which they needed.

Miles had obviously had a similar good year out at the berry farm, from reports she’d heard. She’d been so busy over the past few weeks, she hadn’t had a chance to stop by to chat with him yet, though it had been on her agenda for a while. She’d just never managed to get around to it. Now she regretted not taking the time to visit him.

But she also knew the real reason she’d continually postponed her visits. Miles was a true, no-nonsense Mainer, and could be a tough nut to crack when he wanted to be. Under the bill of a faded orange ball cap with an agricultural logo on it, his weathered face was usually placid and unreadable, and he excelled at using short sentences that consisted primarily of words such as
yup
and
nope
and an occasional
ayuh
thrown in just for the fun of it. You had to patiently tap at that crusty Maine veneer and phrase your questions properly to communicate with him in any real way.

Candy was used to dealing with stoic farmers like Miles. She ran into a lot of them, being a farmer herself, though she was still relatively new to the vocation. The best way to deal with them, she’d discovered, was simply to match her own cadence to theirs, give them some space, and wait them out. Eventually they’d reward you with a few golden nuggets of information. It just took time and patience.

But those two commodities had been in short supply lately, as her life grew increasingly busy owing to her work at the paper, so she’d never managed to swing by the berry farm to exchange pleasantries with Miles. Now she was finally visiting him—but not under the conditions she ever thought possible. . . .

Shocked back to the moment, she saw the oncoming car seconds before it was about to hit her. It came screeching out of a turnoff just ahead on the right, its tail end spinning around as it twisted in her direction. It came right at her, straddling the center of the road, rocking back and forth a little on its springs as it settled into the road. Gaining speed, it hurtled toward her with no signs of slowing.

Candy felt every nerve and cell erupt inside her. Her survival instincts took over as she yanked the steering wheel to the right and jammed both feet onto the brake pedal.

The Jeep rattled and the brakes squealed as the tires bit and the right side dropped off the asphalt. The Jeep bounced up and then thumped down viciously before coming back up again, tossing her hard against the seat belt. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel as the tires jounced around and the vehicle fully left the road, dropping down onto the narrow shoulder. The front wheels caught a rut and tried to pull her into the trees on her right, but she instinctively turned the steering wheel in the other direction. The back tires would have slid out from underneath her had it not been for the vehicle’s four-wheel-drive system, which gave her the grip she needed. It kept her going in the right direction as the oncoming car—a low-slung silver sports car with a black convertible top, which was up and in place—shot past her in a blur and a swoosh of sound.

Candy had the driver’s side window open halfway and could feel the cone of air pushed aside by the speeding vehicle. It rushed through the opening and tossed around her hair. She might have made some sort of sound, a yelp maybe, but she wasn’t quite sure. Maybe the sound had come from somewhere else—the Jeep or the other vehicle as it roared past.

Candy kept her gaze focused straight ahead as the Jeep slowed, but from the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of the person behind the wheel of the silver sports car. An image flashed in Candy’s mind and seemed to freeze there for a few moments: a wraith-thin woman with bleach-blonde hair, dressed all in black, bejeweled fingers gripping the black leather-wrapped steering wheel, bright red lipstick against a smooth, pale face, partially hidden behind huge silver-rimmed sunglasses.

Then the image was gone in a wisp of colors, and the silver convertible was gone too, disappearing behind her in a ricochet of sound. A moment later the vehicle reappeared in a smaller version in Candy’s rearview mirror, but it quickly shrank into the gray distance.

With a spray of dirt and pebbles, the Jeep came to an abrupt stop on the rough shoulder of the road. Candy allowed herself to be thrown forward a little in the seat belt before pulling herself back. She started breathing again, not realizing she had stopped.

She shook her head in disbelief. Her ears were ringing from the shock of the close call. She took a few more breaths to calm herself, fingers still clutched tightly on the steering wheel. She noticed that her knuckles had turned bone white.

She forced herself to loosen her grip and, after a few more moments, put one hand on her chest. She could feel her strongly beating heart.

Finally she turned around and looked back over her shoulder.

There was no sign of the silver convertible that had literally run her off the road. Just empty asphalt and a dissipating cloud of dust caught in the sunlight, drifting off with the sea breeze.

Candy turned back in the other direction, forward again, focusing in the side lane just ahead, from which the silver sports car had burst seconds earlier.

A small red-and-white sign stood out amid the foliage by the side of the road. It was attached to a stake planted deeply into the ground. A red arrow pointed to the right. Above the arrow she read the words,
CRAWFORD’S BERRY FARM—TURN HERE
.

Candy’s brow tightened as her gaze angled to the right, in the direction of the berry farm. She shook her head.

Why would someone come speeding out of that road?

But there was more. She had not only recognized the driver, but glimpsed the license plate, a Maine personalized plate that read
LSG1
.

Candy had seen it before—and she’d seen the silver sports car before too. It was a BMW. The black cloth convertible top had been up and the windows slightly tinted, but there was no mistaking the wraithlike woman behind the steering wheel. She was a well-known local businesswoman, a real estate agent rumored to be involved in the secret real estate deal involving Crawford’s Berry Farm.

“Lydia St. Graves,” Candy heard herself mutter into the sudden silence.

She found Doc sitting inside a police cruiser, talking to Officer Molly Prospect of the Cape Willington Police Department, who was taking his statement. The passenger side door was open, so Candy went to her father, leaned over, and gave him a quick hug.

“Dad, are you okay?” she asked, crouching beside the car so she could get a better look at him.

He turned toward her with watery eyes and a weak smile. “Hello, pumpkin. And yup, I’m fine.” He reached up and patted her hand. His smile disappeared quickly. “Miles isn’t doing so well, though. I seem to have stumbled across his body, much to my surprise—and his as well, I imagine. Never had anything like that happen to me before—or him either, I guess.”

Candy’s jaw tightened. “So it’s true, then?”

Doc nodded sadly. “It’s true, all right. Miles is gone. Saw it with my own two eyes.” To emphasize his point, he jerked a thumb out the windshield of the police cruiser, toward the fields and the hoophouse in the distance.

Candy turned in the direction he indicated. She saw a small group of police officers and a few men in ties and jackets arrayed around one end of the hoophouse, which stood off on one side of a strawberry patch, fifty or sixty yards away. An ambulance was parked nearby.

“They haven’t brought out the body yet,” Doc said with a frown. “I think they’re waiting for the medical examiner, and maybe a forensics team. Not sure. They’re not saying much.”

Candy watched the activity around the hoophouse for a few moments, then turned back to her father. “What happened to him?”

Doc was about to answer, but Officer Prospect spoke up before he did. “I’m still taking his statement,” she told Candy, leaning forward a little and looking over at her from the driver’s seat. She gave Candy a pleasant smile. “I just need him for a little while longer, okay?”

Candy hesitated and blinked a time or two. It took her a few moments to realize she was being politely dismissed. “Oh, okay, I . . . I guess I’ll let you two talk then. I’ll just wait over here until you’re finished.”

She started to back away but Officer Prospect spoke up again. “Actually, if you wouldn’t mind, Ms. Holliday,” she said, pointing out through the windshield toward the hoophouse with her pen, “I think the chief would like a few words with you.”

Surprised, Candy looked off across the fields again. “Chief Durr? With me?”

The officer nodded. “He said to send you up when you arrived.”

“He did? So . . . he’s expecting me?” She gave them both a questioning look.

“He’ll explain up at the hoophouse.” Officer Prospect pointed out the windshield again as Doc sat silently in the passenger seat. He looked like he wanted to say something to her but had been instructed not to. An odd moment passed between father and daughter, and Candy’s alert sensors went up. “Dad, what’s going on?”

His face turned grim and he shook his head. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out, pumpkin.” He met her gaze. “They’ll show you up at the hoophouse. You should probably go on up. Talk to the chief yourself. See what you think.”

Candy was silent for a moment as she felt a tinge of trepidation. “What’s this about? Are you in trouble?”

Doc shook his head. “No, nothing like but . . . But, well, there’s some evidence you need to take a look at.”

“Evidence? What kind of evidence?”

When she received no answers, Candy let out a breath, and her shoulders slumped forward a little. “Okay, I get it. There’s only one way I’m going to find out, right?”

She straightened, patted her father on the shoulder, and turned to face the fields. “I’ll be right back. Don’t you go anywhere.”

“I won’t, pumpkin. I’ll be right here.”

As the wind picked up, she started off across the makeshift parking lot, past Doc’s old pickup truck, still sitting where he’d left it, and angled around the barn. On the far side she passed a vegetable garden that looked like something you’d see on a TV show, with green tomatoes plumping up, bright green cucumbers on thickening vines, artfully arranged bean teepees, neat rows of carrots and radishes and lettuce, and a back row of sunflowers still a few weeks from full bloom. Beyond that was a small herb garden with a thick hedge of lavender. Farther on, the strawberry plants in straight rows were thick and heavy with fruit, ripening in the sun.

She couldn’t help but notice how green everything looked, and how well tended. The path that led up toward the hoophouse was weedless. The soil looked dark and rich. Miles had planned and worked the farm meticulously for years, getting the most from the fertile land.

Why on earth would he want to sell this?
she wondered.

It was a prime piece of property, oblong-shaped, with woods on the right beyond the fields and the sea to the left at the bottom of a long, gentle slope. Now that she saw it again for herself, she could understand why so many rumors about the place were floating around town.

And she was beginning to think there was more truth behind the rumors than she’d previously believed.

As she approached the hoophouse, one of the uniformed police officers standing just outside the doorway spotted her and frowned. He looked like he was about to chase her away, but after a moment he seemed to recognize her and called to someone inside.

A few moments later Chief Darryl Durr emerged from the hoophouse, looking grim-faced and preoccupied. Absently his gaze shifted back and forth across the fields before finally alighting on her. His expression relaxed slightly and he gave her a thin smile and a nod in acknowledgement. She nodded back as she crossed the distance between them.

“Hello, Ms. Holliday,” he said as she reached him. “Thanks for coming on up. I suppose you heard we’ve had a little trouble around here this morning.”

“Yes, Chief, I heard.”

“And you’ve talked to your father and Officer Prospect?”

Candy dipped her head. “I did. But they didn’t tell me much. What’s this all about?”

The chief crooked a finger and turned. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

He turned back toward the hoophouse, pointing to a cardboard box lying on the ground outside the doorway. “I’ll need you to put on some booties first. Once we get inside, follow instructions and stay in the designated areas. Don’t touch anything. We have ourselves a live crime scene here. We’ve done a preliminary sweep of the area, but we have a full forensics team coming in from the state. They’ll be arriving shortly.”

Candy hesitated, and felt a chill. She wasn’t sure she was ready for this, and she had no idea what to expect. But she did as he asked, and steeled herself before following him inside.

The place was like a mausoleum. It had an almost spiritual presence to it, a reverence usually reserved for centuries-old European cathedrals, though it was nothing more than a plastic-sided, semitransparent, steel-tube-framed structure designed to serve as a makeshift greenhouse. It was several degrees warmer inside than out, and more humid. The earthy smell of soil and vegetation mingled with the scents of the officers around her, and something else that lingered in the air, something unpleasant.

Chief Durr was several steps ahead of her, following a narrow roped-off pathway along a center aisle with a dirt floor. He pointed. “There are doors at either end of the hoophouse, as you can see. Doc came in this way, the same way we entered. Both doors were opened when we arrived. The body’s over here.”

Candy had been in hoophouses before, and this one was no different than others she’d seen—just a wide aisle down the middle with raised beds on either side and a simple gravity-fed tube irrigation system. In the right-side bed was lettuce in two stages—a young crop and one in midcycle. On the left were rows of cherry tomatoes of various varieties, as well as Asian greens, purple mustard, cilantro, and what looked like endive—probably being grown for local restaurants and hotels, like the Lightkeeper’s Inn, Candy surmised.

The center aisle was a little muddy down the middle, so they followed a narrow roped-off path that kept them close to the right-side bed and away from the wet earth, where footprints might have been left. The path skirted one area of the asile completely, taking them up over the front edge of the bed itself.

From her raised position, Candy looked ahead. Two-thirds of the way along the aisle, on the left, stood a large metal rack with six or eight wide shelves, holding new plantings in small black plastic six-packs. Just past that, surrounded by two EMTs in dark blue uniforms and another officer from the Cape Willington Police Department, lay the body.

It was covered with a sheet. “The damage was too severe to be accidental,” the chief said over his shoulder as he led her along the bed toward the actual scene of the crime. “It appears he was hit multiple times while standing and then again a few times while lying on the ground, with the flat side and edges of the blade.”

“Blade?” Candy asked meekly.

“The blade of a shovel, Ms. Holliday,” the chief clarified.

“A shovel?” Candy slowed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to get any closer.

The chief stopped and waited for her to catch up, looking back at her now. “There don’t appear to be any signs of a struggle,” he continued in a soft tone, his head lowered toward her. “It looks like he was taken by surprise. Perhaps he knew the person who did it. Perhaps he was ambushed.”

Candy shivered uncontrollably. “Someone hit him over the head with a shovel?”

The chief’s mouth tightened. “It’s over here. If you’ll come with me.”

He detoured around the body, following the path as it cut directly across the raised bed on the right. They walked on a plank that had been laid across neat rows of lettuce, so close to the sloping side of the hoophouse that the chief had to tilt his head away from the encroaching plastic wall.

After another half-dozen paces, he crossed back over on the other side of the bed, just past the body. At the edge he stopped and pointed down at the central aisle.

Candy followed him in silence. She stopped beside him and looked down.

An old farm shovel lay across the aisle, as if it had been dropped there by accident. The wood handle was dark with age, the blade dull, marked by deep streaks and scratches from years of heavy use. Candy had seen dozens like it. They had several out at Blueberry Acres that could have matched this one exactly. It was a tool of the farmer’s and gardener’s trade.

“You’ll notice,” the chief said, still pointing, “that there’s a marking on the handle.”

“A marking?” Candy looked.

Indeed, there was.

It was faded but still legible. Just two thick letters, written in a steady hand with a black marker.

B.A.

“You have any idea what that refers to?” the chief asked, looking back at her with an odd expression on his face.

Candy felt a tightening in her stomach. Her mouth went suddenly dry. “I do,” she said softly. “Doc marks a lot of his tools like that. They tend to get passed around sometimes, so he wanted to make sure they always found their way home.”

She pulled her gaze from the alleged murder weapon and looked up at the chief, the shock evident in her voice as she spoke. “That shovel is from Blueberry Acres.”