Town in a Pumpkin Bash (12 page)

Mrs. Pruitt glanced down at the gray and lavender outfit she was wearing before she
continued. “Mother spent several years remodeling and expanding the mansion. She specified
the manor’s exterior design, which remains unchanged to this day, and extensively
redecorated the interior.
She grew to love this old place, and in her later years, spent more and more time
here. She often said that being so close to the sea rejuvenated her.”

Mrs. Pruitt paused again, as if swept away by a memory, her gaze wandering out a window
into the distance, but after a few moments, it shifted back to Candy. Abruptly Mrs.
Pruitt rose. “Come, I’ll show you.”

Taking Candy by the hand, she led the way out of the room, along a hall, and to the
front foyer. Tristan followed, his hands entwined behind his back. Once in the foyer,
he leaned nonchalantly against a doorjamb as his aunt indicated one of the portraits
hanging on the walls.

“This is my mother, Abigail,” she told Candy, who looked up at the image she’d indicated.

It was one of the larger portraits—nearly a yard wide and perhaps four feet tall,
with an elaborate gilded frame. It hung above them, centered on the wall, obviously
in a place of honor. Candy had noticed the portrait earlier but had been unaware of
the woman’s identity. Now that she knew who it was, she studied the portrait with
a more scrutinizing eye.

Abigail Pruitt had obviously sought to look her best during the portrait sitting,
for she was elegantly dressed and decked out with a stunning jeweled necklace and
matching bracelet. Her hair was drawn back from her face, much as Mrs. Pruitt’s was
today, and she had the same firm set of the mouth, the same long nose, the same sharp
yet inquisitive eyes above high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her stern expression
made her look a little scary, Candy had to admit, and she sensed from the portrait
that Abigail would have been a formidable woman to deal with, and a tenacious enemy
to anyone who crossed her.

“She’s very…handsome,” Candy said diplomatically.

“She was a tough, no-nonsense type of person,” Mrs. Pruitt agreed, “but she had to
be, given her status and the day and age in which she lived. Father ran an empire,
and she ran it along with him. But underneath that gruff exterior,
she had a warm heart, I can assure you. Her loyalty to the family and love for her
husband and children knew no bounds. She would go to the ends of the earth to protect
her family, and the Pruitt name, if she had to—and more than once, she did exactly
that. I never saw her fight a battle she didn’t win.”

At this, Mrs. Pruitt turned to Candy and gave her a slight smile. “My father knew
that about her as well, and did his best to avoid any confrontations with her, for
her wrath was something to behold. Yet, despite his efforts to avoid it, he felt the
full force of it on more than one occasion, I can assure you. We all did. But we still
loved her.”

Mrs. Pruitt moved on then, indicating a smaller portrait of a well-groomed, well-dressed
man on Abigail’s left. “That’s my father, Cornelius, painted in the forties. And over
here,” Mrs. Pruitt said, taking a few more steps and pointing up at another portrait,
“is my grandfather, Horace Roberts Pruitt, who in many ways is the father of what
we consider to be modern-day Cape Willington. He loved this sleepy little coastal
village more than anyplace else in the world. And he did much to ensure the village
survived long after he was gone—the building of the opera house being one example.”

Mrs. Pruitt turned to face Candy. “I have now taken on the burdens borne by my ancestors.
I cherish my family, and I love this town and the people in it, and I will do anything
within my power to protect all that is dear to me. But I must admit to you that I
am concerned, for I feel, in the past few years, that we have come under siege.”

This odd comment took Candy by surprise. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Mrs. Pruitt said dramatically, “that there are forces aligning against us—against
my family and against the people of this town. This recent rash of murders we’ve experienced—well,
murder is not all that common here in Maine, is it? Not like in the larger cities
to the south. That’s
why we all treasure this village so much, and why we all seek to protect the special
way of life here in Maine. Don’t you agree that murder seems to have become commonplace
in Cape Willington, and that it is completely out of sorts with what’s happening in
the rest of the state?”

Candy nodded, for she’d been feeling the same thing for quite some time. “I do.”

“And now this most recent murder—this Sebastian Quinn fellow…” Mrs. Pruitt’s voice
trailed off, and she shook her head sadly. “Something is not right, Candy. Something
terrible is happening here, and it’s threatening not only my own family, but all Capers.
And I cannot, I
will not
let it stand.”

She took a calming breath, and Candy realized that the elderly woman was shivering.

Tristan noticed it also, and he stepped forward, coming to his aunt’s aid, but she
waved him back, straightening and steeling herself. “I may be old,” she told Candy
with a firmness in her voice, “but I have plenty of fight left in me, and like my
mother, this is a battle I will not lose.”

Candy took a moment to think about that, and decided to bring the conversation back
to where it had started. “So what does the stolen diary that belonged to your mother
have to do with all of this?”

“We don’t know for certain,” Tristan said, “but we do feel there’s some connection
between it and the death of Sebastian J. Quinn—and perhaps with some of the other
deaths that have occurred around town over the past few years.”

Candy shook her head. “But I don’t understand. How could it have anything to do with
Sebastian’s death?”

“Because of the person who was involved in the theft of Mother’s diary,” Mrs. Pruitt
said simply. “You see, I believe I know who stole it. That’s why Tristan went out
to see you this morning in that pumpkin patch you’ve been running with Ms. Tremont.
That’s why he invited you here to lunch
with us today—so we could ask for your help in getting to the bottom of this mystery
that seems to be consuming our town.”

Now Candy found herself shivering as another question came to her, though she hesitated
to ask it, for she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. Softly, as if approaching
the most delicate of topics, she asked, “And who do you think stole your mother’s
diary, Mrs. Pruitt?”

“I believe,” the Pruitt family matriarch said, stiffening, “that the diary was taken
by Sapphire Vine before she died.”

Sapphire Vine
.

There she was again…continuing to haunt them, rising from the grave like a ghostly
presence, her dark influence lingering in everything she touched when she was alive.

But what could she possibly have wanted with a beat-up old diary written by Abigail
Pruitt?
Candy wondered.
What was she after?

Mrs. Pruitt’s words echoed in Candy’s mind.
Mother had her secrets,
she’d said.

That was it then. Sapphire had found out something about the Pruitts—a family secret
of some sort—and perhaps hoped to use it to blackmail them, as she’d done to others
in town.

But what secrets could Abigail have written down in her diary?

This mystery,
Candy realized with a chill,
goes deeper than I thought.

She looked back at the portraits. As her mind worked,
her gaze lingered on Abigail Pruitt’s eyes.
What were you up to?

After a few moments, Candy turned abruptly and walked out of the foyer, past Tristan,
and back along the hallway they’d just come through, to the library. Once inside the
door, she turned right and headed straight to the shelves that held Abigail Pruitt’s
old diaries. “How many of them are there in all—the diaries, I mean?” Candy asked,
running her gaze along the rows of leather-bound journals.

Mrs. Pruitt had followed her, and now came up behind her. “There are a total of thirty-seven.
She started the first one shortly after she arrived at Pruitt Manor, in the 1920s.
The last one—well, it’s only partially finished, as that’s the volume she was working
on when she passed away. Each volume is numbered, by the way, on the first page.”

“Thirty-seven in all,” Candy said, repeating what Mrs. Pruitt had just told her. She
noticed that the missing volume was close to the end of the row on the second shelf.
“What was the number of the one that was taken?”

“It was number thirty out of thirty-seven,” Mrs. Pruitt said.

On an impulse, Candy reached up and withdrew diary number twenty-nine from the shelf.
Almost as an afterthought, she turned around and faced Mrs. Pruitt, indicating the
volume, which she held up. “May I?”

Mrs. Pruitt nodded, ever so slightly. While it appeared she was not used to having
outsiders examine her mother’s private diaries, she knew it was part of the investigative
process.

Candy returned a nod before shifting her gaze to the diary she held in her hands.
It had a well-worn chocolate brown leather cover, while most of the others were gray
or black. The pages were not gilt edged. As delicately as possible, she flipped open
the cover and scanned the first page.

The Thoughts and Reminiscences of Abigail Pruitt
, read
the line at the top, written in a controlled yet delicate script, with numerous flourishes.
It appeared that, despite her stern demeanor, Abigail had a fondness for expressive
penmanship.

In the top corner of the page, Abigail had noted:
Volume N˚ 29
.

The first entry started a few lines down:

It was certainly flowery enough. Abigail seemed to imagine that she had a poetic soul.
But Candy’s attention was drawn to the more specific parts of the entry. Her mouth
tightened and her brow furrowed in thought as she pondered the possible significance
of the date and time of the first entry. But, she quickly realized, that was of no
importance. So she read no further, but instead flipped back to the diary’s last page,
and the final entry, which read:

Thoughtfully Candy closed diary number twenty-nine, replaced it on the shelf, skipped
her finger across the open space once occupied by the missing book, and withdrew the
next one in line, diary number thirty-one, from the shelf. It was a little larger
than the one she’d just perused, with heavier paper. Again, she turned to its first
page.

Abigail had started this new journal at dawn on Monday, March 20, 1967—the spring
equinox.

Obviously Abigail liked to begin and end her diaries on important astronomical dates.
But for the moment, that was beside the point. What were important, she thought, were
the dates of the missing journal.

“She must have started diary number thirty—the missing one—sometime around mid-September
1965 and finished it around mid-March 1967,” Candy mused out loud. “So most of the
year 1966…”

She turned back to Mrs. Pruitt. “Did anything significant happen in your mother’s
life during the mid-1960s?” Candy asked. “A special event or milestone in Abigail’s
life during those years?”

Tristan had wandered back into the room, and he settled into his chair again, running
a hand wearily through his thick, sandy-colored hair. “We’ve asked ourselves that
same question a hundred times and keep coming up blank.”

Mrs. Pruitt gave a more thorough answer. “I was living in New York City at the time,”
she told Candy, “raising two children of my own, who were still young. My husband
was in the financial business, but when he passed away unexpectedly in the early 1970s,
I reassumed my maiden name and took up the family business. I didn’t return to Boston—or
to Pruitt Manor—until the early eighties, when my mother grew ill. Cornelius had passed
away in 1959, and for most of the years after that, Mother lived alone—either at one
of the family’s homes in Boston or, increasingly, here at Pruitt Manor. What she might
have been up to in those days, none of us really know.”