Town in a Pumpkin Bash (10 page)

“What do you mean?” Candy asked, looking over at her friend.

“Sapphire’s house. I’m telling you it’s cursed, just like I said. And the evidence
is clear. First Sapphire dies, and now Sebastian. It seems like anyone who’s connected
to that place winds up murdered.”

“That’s crazy talk.”

“No, it’s not!” Maggie said, her voice rising to emphasize her point. “I’m totally
serious about this! That house is cursed, I’m telling you…and I just hope the curse
doesn’t transfer to us!”

Normally, Candy didn’t believe in curses, or haunted houses, or ghosts, for that matter—other
than the Halloween variety, of course. But she’d seen some strange things going on
around Cape Willington over the past few years—like a man who thought he could turn
himself invisible, and a trio of sisters who were said to have uncanny premonitions,
and a white moose that had an affinity for discovering dead bodies and old hermits
in the woods. So she wasn’t quite ready to rule anything out—at least not yet, not
until she determined for herself what was true, and what wasn’t.

So even though Maggie was probably exaggerating about the curse—
probably
, Candy admitted—her friend was right about one thing: Whatever was happening around
town, whatever had happened to Sebastian J. Quinn, it seemed to revolve around Sapphire
Vine and her old house.

Sapphire Vine
.

It was a name that continued to plague the residents of Cape Willington. Even though
she’d been dead for more
than two years now, struck down in the prime of her life in her own home by a vicious
murderer, the former gossip columnist and blackmailer somehow managed to continue
to reach out from the grave, casting a dark shadow over their quiet coastal village.

How was that possible? Candy wondered. She knew the hold Sapphire had had on a number
of individuals, including Sebastian, but had there been something else—something none
of them knew about?

Why had Sebastian been interested in renting Sapphire’s old house? Candy asked herself.
Was there something still there, in the house, that Sebastian wanted?

And if so, what could it be?

Candy thought back to the file she’d seen laying on the front seat of Sebastian’s
car.
Emma
, it had been labeled.

Emma.

Who was Emma? Why had Sebastian left that file sitting on the seat? And did it have
anything to do with Sebastian’s death?

Candy thought she knew a way to find out.

It had come to her after she’d dropped off Maggie at her house in Fowler’s Corner,
so she could locate, print out, and assemble the e-mails Sebastian had sent to her
over the past few weeks, at the police chief’s request. Earlier in the day, Candy
had vaguely recalled seeing the name Emma somewhere before, and it had nagged at the
back of her mind for the past couple of hours. But as she backed out of Maggie’s driveway
and turned toward town, she suddenly knew where she must have seen it.

She found a parking spot along Ocean Avenue, one of the town’s two primary commercial
streets, and headed up to her second-floor office at the
Cape Crier
, where she worked part-time as a community columnist and occasional reporter.

She’d inherited the position of columnist from Sapphire Vine herself, who spent years
with the paper before her
death, covering local events while secretly amassing a collection of documents, photos,
and files on many of the town’s citizens. Sapphire had then used some of the more
damaging information she’d collected to blackmail several individuals.

She’d kept some of the files in her office at the newspaper, but had hidden away the
more damaging ones in a secret hideaway in the attic of her house, where only she
could access them. After Sapphire’s death, Candy had inherited many of the files,
and her first instinct had been to burn them, destroying the secrets they contained.
But after careful consideration, she’d had second thoughts, and had decided to hold
on to them, in case they were ever needed in an emergency.

Out of respect for the privacy of others, Candy had largely avoided going through
the files, and had dug into them only once before, when she thought the information
they contained might help her solve a mystery.

Now she was about to search through them again, since she was almost certain that
somewhere in those files, she’d once seen a reference to someone named Emma.

Upstairs, she found the maze of second-floor offices deserted; it was late Saturday
morning, almost noon, and none of the staff members were working today, since the
paper had recently reverted to its twice-a-month publishing schedule, after putting
out an issue twice weekly during the summer months, which often meant weekend hours.

Like the other offices, the one belonging to Ben Clayton was dark and deserted. Ben
had flown out to San Francisco earlier in the week to attend a journalism and social
media conference, at which he’d been booked as a panelist for a Sunday-morning session.
Taking advantage of the trip, he’d also managed to snag an interview with an Internet
billionaire who had local roots. The interview was scheduled to take place early the
following week, but Ben had promised Candy he’d make it back to Cape Willington in
time for her fortieth birthday.

Once in her office, Candy pushed the door closed behind her and stepped right to the
filing cabinet in the corner, where she dropped into a cross-legged sitting position.
Directly in front of her, the cabinet’s bottom drawer was labeled with only two letters:
SV
.

Sapphire Vine
.

Candy took a deep breath, moved her hand to the dull metal handle, slid aside the
button with her thumb, and pulled open the drawer.

She leaned in for a closer look as the files fanned out before her, extending deep
into the cabinet. All the tabbed labels were neatly printed in Sapphire’s own handwriting,
usually in purple, green, or red ink, often embellished with various curlicues, hearts,
and even little drawings of flowers, kitties, and stars. Many bore the names of individuals
Candy knew well:
Alby Alcott
,
Melody Barnes
,
Judicious F. P. Bosworth
,
WB
(for Wanda Boyle, a file Candy had already peered into at an earlier time),
Delilah Daggerstone
,
Charlotte Depew…

And there it was, directly in front of a file labeled
The Foxwell Sisters
—an old, well-worn one simply labeled
Emma
.

Gently Candy removed the file, laid it flat across the top of the other files in the
drawer, and flipped it open.

Inside, she found only two items.

One was an old black-and-white, eight-by-ten-inch, somewhat crinkled photograph of
a gravestone. The other was a photocopy of an aged index card, like those from an
old library card catalog.

She examined the photo of the gravestone first. It looked as if it had been blown
up from a smaller photo, for it was too blurry to see anything in any sort of detail.
She could make out the word
EMMA
in large, indistinct capital letters near the top of the stone, but there was no
last name, or at least one that was readable. She saw several smaller inscriptions
engraved into the bottom of the gravestone, but those,
too, were impossible to read due to the poor quality of the photo.

Candy studied it for several moments, her gaze focused in on the singular inscription.

Emma.

So,
she thought,
here’s the proof that I was right.

There
was
a connection between Sebastian, Emma, and Sapphire Vine.

And it appeared Emma was dead—that she had, in fact, died quite a while ago, judging
by the age of the photo.

She noticed, then, that the gravestone showed no dates. No birth date. No date of
Emma’s death.

Candy frowned. That was strange. What gravestone failed to show the life span of the
deceased? Wasn’t that the whole point of one—to commemorate and help others remember
a person’s life?

She also now noticed that the gravestone appeared to be in a small, grassy cemetery,
somewhat overgrown and unattended, surrounded by vegetation and what looked like some
sort of stone wall. There were only a few other dark gravestones surrounding Emma’s,
their inscriptions blurred as well. They appeared to be quite old.

A family plot?
Candy wondered.

Leaving those questions for later, she set aside the photo of the gravestone and turned
to the other document she’d found in the file—the photocopy of the index card.

But before she could study it in any detail, she was interrupted when her cell phone
buzzed. Momentarily distracted, she fished it out of her pocket and checked the name
on the display screen.

It was Wanda Boyle calling her. Wanda was the town busybody, who about a year ago
had started a popular local blog called the
Cape Crusader
. She and Candy routinely butted heads over just about everything that went on in
town.

Candy pursed her lips and shook her head. She had no interest in talking to Wanda
at the moment, so she slipped
the phone back into her pocket without answering it and returned her gaze to the document
she held in her hand.

She noticed now that the index card depicted in the photocopy was from the Pruitt
Public Library, since the library’s name was faintly visible in the upper-left corner
of the card. The library was still housed in a historic building named for its primary
benefactor, Horace Roberts Pruitt, the grandfather of Helen Ross Pruitt—and Tristan’s
great-grandfather.

Sapphire must have photocopied the card at some point in the past few years, though
Candy knew that card catalogs had almost totally disappeared from libraries in this
digital age. However, she imagined that the library might still maintain the old card
catalog in some back corner of the building.

In the photocopy, the index card appeared to be a few decades old. Across the top,
typed in bold letters, were the words,
A History of the Pruitt Family in Maine, 1789–1975; in 26 Volumes
. Below that were the appropriate reference numbers, supporting publishing data, and
author information.

Stamped across the bottom in faded block letters was the declaration W
ITHDRAWN
, and off to the side, written in a neat librarian’s pen, was an additional note:
Volume XXIII missing. Returned to the family’s private archives at Pruitt Manor, as
per Mrs. A.P.—

Another stamp, also faded with age, established the date of the transfer as
17 AUG 72
, presumably for the entire collection of Pruitt histories.

Again, another mystery. Why would Sapphire have photocopied this old index card? What
value could it have had to her? What was her interest in it? And why had it been hidden
away in a file labeled
Emma
?

There must be a link, Candy realized, between the missing volume of Pruitt history
and the woman named Emma, now dead.

Candy focused in on the librarian’s handwritten inscription
on the card:
Returned to the family’s private archives at Pruitt Manor, as per Mrs. A.P.—

Who was Mrs. A.P.? she wondered.

And what had Sapphire—and Sebastian—been after?

Her phone buzzed again, making her jump.

She fished it out of her pocket and checked the screen.

Wanda Boyle. The woman was relentless.

Again, Candy let Wanda’s call go to voice mail, but as she was replacing the phone,
she felt something else she’d slipped into her back pocket.

She pulled it out. A business card. Two of them, actually—one given to her by Officer
Prospect, and the other by Tristan Pruitt.

She stared at the two cards for several moments, and then on an impulse took out her
mobile phone again and dialed the number of one of them.

The person at the other end answered right away. “Hello?”

“Tristan, it’s Candy Holliday.”

“Candy!” He sounded genuinely pleased to hear from her. “This
is
a surprise. I’m glad you called. What can I do for you?”

“Well, remember that invite for lunch today? I wonder if the offer still stands?”