Town in a Blueberry Jam

murder.

Ray, she decided, was the key. And she had to follow that key wherever it led.

Suddenly she knew what she had to do. Rising purposefully from the bench, she walked briskly to the Jeep, climbed in, started it up, and drove back out onto the Loop. She headed south. The road curved around southwestward, taking her past Pruitt Manor, and then angled northwestward, past the Lobster Shack, past a thin strip of sand that was the town beach, and back up the Cape. She drove out of town, and kept going.

Ten minutes later she turned off the main road onto a dusty lane that led back to an old two-bedroom shack, which sat on a deserted piece of land framed by stands of old pines and low bushes.

Ray’s home.

He had lived here with his mother when she had been alive, and by himself for the past three or four years. It was a sad, lonely looking place, without much character. The little house did have a fresh coat of dull gray paint on it and a porch swing that looked like something Andy Griffith might have sat on in the evenings with Aunt Bee. A rusty old pickup, much older than Doc’s, sat up on blocks, its tires missing. In front of the house and off to one side was a small, weathered barn with a roof so swaybacked that it seemed it would collapse at any moment.

Candy pulled up in front of the house and shut off the engine. She sat for a moment looking around, feeling strangely out of place. She had been here a few times before, but always with Doc, and always when Ray was around. Being here now, alone, with Ray in jail and the place empty and ghostlike made her feel like a trespasser.

But no, it was nothing like that, she reminded herself. She was here to help Ray, not to foreclose on his property or tear it down. She was here to investigate.

So investigate she would.

Cautiously she climbed out of the Jeep. Birds sang in the high trees. The barn door’s rusted hinges creaked slightly in the breeze. Sounds of cars passing by on the Loop were faintly audible.

Candy slammed shut the car door and walked around to one side of Ray’s old house, squinting up at it, studying it as if she were a prospective buyer considering its aesthetic value. It looked smaller than she remembered. There couldn’t have been more than eight hundred or a thousand square feet inside. The front porch was a newer addition. In the back there was only a cement stoop with an old metal garden chair on it, its faded pink paint rusting in spots. A few dead flowers in pots had been set out back.

Candy tried to peek into a few of the windows, but they were locked tight with the shades pulled down, so she couldn’t see much.

In fact, there wasn’t much at all to see. She walked to the barn, peered in the door, but except for old shovels and rakes, a few bales of moldy hay, and some long-abandoned farm equipment, it was empty. The flooring looked rotted. She decided it was too dangerous to enter, and in fact, she decided, the whole thing should probably just have been torn down.

“I guess this was a bad idea,” she said to herself, shaking her head. “There’s nothing here.”

She started toward the Jeep, pulled open the door... but something held her back, kept her from climbing up into the seat. She turned and looked around. It was only an instinct, something gnawing at her, that made her close the door again and take a final walk around the house, with sharper eyes this time.

And that’s when she noticed the well-worn path, angling off through the grassy field behind the house, toward a copse of trees in the distance.

Now that was curious.

I wonder where that leads?

Her gaze rose, following the path into the distance. From what she could see, there were no houses back in that direction — no noticeable destination to which the path might lead. Perhaps it led to a garden, or a fire pit where Ray burned his trash.

Yes, that was probably it.

Still, her curiosity was piqued.

Before she had even fully thought it through, she started along the path that cut a fine thin line through knee-high grasses, goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace, and other weeds and wildflowers. This part of the property had obviously been neglected for years. At one time it might have been a well-tended field, lush with peas or beans, carrots, radishes and beets, corn and rhubarb and squash. Strawberries or raspberries might have been grown here, asparagus or new potatoes. But now it had gone to seed and showed no signs that it would change anytime soon.

As she moved further on, the field gave way to a thick fringe of black chokeberry bushes, and then she was in amongst the trees...

. . . and there it was, partially hidden by the leaves and branches.

There was no missing it or mistaking it. Ten feet or so off the ground, utilizing the thick trunks of a half dozen trees set closely together, meticulously crafted with plywood walls, a shingled roof, and even real windows, was a tree house.

Or rather, Candy thought as a jolt of realization shot through her, a tree fort.

The reality of it all, of what she had just discovered, took her breath away.

“Wow,” was all she could say.

She stood there looking at it, studying it, for what seemed like the longest time, until she finally edged forward, toward it, then underneath it. It was fully a tenth of the size of the small shack in which Ray lived, and looked to be much more richly appointed and much more carefully cared for. It was obvious that Ray had spent not days, even weeks or months, but years tending to his hideaway.

Not unlike Sapphire’s little attic hideaway, Candy thought. Strange how both of them felt a need to hide a part of themselves away from the public eye, and how both of them were irrevocably linked, in life and death.

Shaking away these curious thoughts, Candy looked around for a way up. Finding a knotted rope that hung down from the underside of the tree fort, she gave it a tug, which revealed a spring-operated drop-down ladder that fell neatly into place, with its bottom step resting just a few inches above the ground.

“Wow,” Candy said again.

With a sense of discovery and expectation, she climbed the ladder and emerged at the top into a magnificent room, with a polished wide pine floor, a table and chairs, a rocker in one corner, a built-in bed with a mattress, a wood stove, and just about every imaginable amenity with the exception of electricity, though Candy had no doubt that Ray could have rigged that too if he had a mind to.

And there, sitting at the center of the table, was a red-handled hammer.

Just as Ray had said.

She walked closer to get a better look at it but didn’t touch it. She didn’t want to get her fingerprints on it.

She leaned forward, holding her breath.

Sure enough, on the handle just below the claw head, was a small, almost imperceptible nick — a nick she had put there herself, when she mistreated the hammer while building her booth last Friday, almost a week ago.

This was Ray’s hammer — there was no mistake about it. He had brought it here, to keep it safe.

Which meant the hammer found in Sapphire’s house — the hammer that was used to kill her — had not been Ray’s.

That hammer must have been the one that belonged to Ned Winetrop.

It was evidence that just might prove Ray’s innocence.

Candy knew she had to call the police — she couldn’t keep information like this to herself. Once the police saw what she had found, they would have to release Ray.

She was turning to leave when something else caught her eye — a note card set on a side shelf. She couldn’t say what attracted her to it, except for perhaps the way it was displayed, as if in an honored position. Candy crossed to it, took it off the shelf, and read the typed message on the inside:

Come to my house this evening at 9:30. Bring your toolbox. I need your help.

It was signed Sapphire in a flowery script, with a swooping