morning and will be at another tomorrow. There’s no trace of me up here. And besides, I’m sure you’re aware that I own your newspaper. It’s part of my family’s holdings. As such, both you and Ben work for me. You wouldn’t want me to shut down your own paper, would you? You wouldn’t want Wanda Boyle to become the sole news reporter in town? You wouldn’t want Ben to leave town for another job, and lose that extra income for yourself and Doc?”
Candy was stunned. “What are you saying?”
Porter’s tone suddenly turned very serious. “Here’s what I’m saying. I’m putting Cape Willington on notice. It’s time for all of you to pay up for past transgressions. So I’m letting you and a few others know. Call it a simple courtesy, but do not be mistaken. For too long my family has been disgraced by the people of this town. Those days are over. And I just wanted you to know it so you could have a front-row seat as you watch it happen.” He gave her a dark grin.
“But why?
He turned and looked out the window then, and checked his watch. “Our time is up. You should leave the building now. It’s not safe here.”
He tossed the black key to her, then turned and started to walk away, but Candy called after him: “What did your brother take from the journal that night at the lighthouse?”
She was referring to an incident that had occurred the last time she’d encountered a member of the Sykes family. And that one had been strangely similar to this.
Porter stopped and turned back to her. “It’s what we’re all looking for,” he said enigmatically. “Even Ben. Why don’t you ask him about it?”
And with that, Porter Sykes disappeared into the shadows of the house.
Fifty
A little more than a week later, on a Monday morning, the last day of January, Candy Holliday sat at the kitchen table, paging through seed catalogs and sipping a cup of hot tea. Every once in a while, as she flipped a page or after she’d focused in on a particularly interesting description of a zucchini or a pumpkin, she’d shift her gaze out the window, toward the blueberry fields and the woods behind the house.
There had been no arrest of Porter Sykes—or someone known as Preston Smith, for that matter. There had been no word from him since she’d last seen him out at Whitefield. The Sykes mansion itself had been in the news this past week, however. Apparently some kids had broken in and started a fire to warm themselves, but things got out of hand. The fire spread to some rags and debris nearby, and soon the whole place was ablaze, quickly burning down to the ground. The fire department arrived too late to save the old mansion, but it wasn’t much of a loss, most around town agreed. The place had fallen into disrepair years ago. The following day, the Sykes family of Boston issued a statement saying they were putting the property up for sale.
Ben had shared some of his research of the Sykes and Pruitt families with her. She’d told Doc a little bit about it, and he’d done some digging in the historical society’s archives. He’d come up with an interesting old newspaper clipping from the Bangor paper, with a press date in the mid-1960s.
“It’s about a historian from Orono who was researching local family histories,” Doc told her as he handed it to her. “This historian, a man by the name of Decker, promoted the fact that Gideon Sykes, the father of Porter and his siblings, and the husband of Daisy Porter-Sykes, had committed suicide in that old mansion. His theory was that after Gideon had taken his own life, there had been a huge cover-up, and this Decker fellow suspected it had something to do with the old man’s insurance money—a sizable payout, by the way.”
Candy had read the rest of the clipping and handed it back to Doc. “Bury it somewhere,” she told him.
Toward the bottom of the article, she’d read that the historian named Decker had died a few weeks later, under mysterious, still-undetermined circumstances.
For now, she thought, it was best to keep that information under wraps.
For the past week she had struggled with the question of what to do about Porter and the information he’d told her. It had kept her awake nearly every night since, and had just about driven her crazy. She’d nearly spilled the beans to Doc several times, desperate for his advice. She’d avoided seeing Maggie, knowing it was next to impossible to keep anything from her friend. And she had resisted talking to Ben until she could sort out what to do and what to tell him.
The good news was that Doc barely noticed her internal agony. He was back at work on his book, and there were evenings when he brought home armloads of them from the library and historical society. He’d even made a trip to the university library up at Orono, which gave him a chance to catch up with some old friends, lifting his spirits.
Speaking of spirits, she had seen the white moose only one other time, a few nights ago from her bedroom window, as the moon drifted lazily in its arc across the sky, casting its white glow upon the frozen blueberry fields. The moose had stood in the shadows of the distant trees for the longest time, watching the house, and she had watched back, until finally her eyelids had grown heavy and she’d gone to bed.
Now she looked out at the fields and shrugged. In another few weeks winter would begin to loosen its grip on the landscape. They’d still have a storm or two in early March, usually sometime around the eighth of the month, but the cold season was coming to an end, and then the wondrous rebirth would begin.
Candy Holliday sighed deeply in anticipation and turned back to her catalogs. Spring was coming, and she had a garden to plan.
Epilogue
Ben slammed the book closed and tossed it roughly on a nearby table, which itself was laden with numerous historical works and archival manuscripts. He’d been going through the material for weeks now, searching for the one clue that would tell him what was really going on and give him some insight into the murders that had been occurring around town. His gut told him there was a pattern, a reason it was all happening, but if one existed, he still could not see it.
His search would go on, though. He was determined to find out why the Sykes family had targeted Cape Willington and what their ultimate goal was.
As his gaze scanned the desktop, he caught sight of the letter, stuffed into a cubbyhole off to one side. It was the third one he’d received in as many months. But it had been no less confounding than the first two. There had been only a couple of lines:
It was unsigned, but he had a good idea who it had come from. There had been no specific threats yet, in any of the letters—nothing he could take to the police. But even if there had been—or might be in the future—he wasn’t sure he would. This wasn’t a matter for the police to sort out. This was his mystery. And he would pursue it himself.
He’d thought of telling Candy several times about what he was doing, bringing her deeper into his theories and fears. But he didn’t want to worry her right now. Besides, after all that had happened to her over the past two years, he didn’t want to burden her with the knowledge that this could just be the beginning.
He let out a deep breath, got up to put another log on the fire, and returned to his desk.
Just another book or two, he told himself, and then he’d give up for the night.
Recipes
