Town in a Lobster Stew

Jostled again, she looked up. Lost in her thoughts, she’d wandered all the way down the Coastal Loop road, past the Unitarian church and the cemetery, to Town Park, which was aswarm with people waiting for the parade’s arrival. It had reached the top of Ocean Avenue now and was headed down toward the sea, led by three police squad cars with sirens blaring.

Candy’s head turned. Directly across from her stood the Lightkeeper’s Inn.

As she studied the inn’s facade and lawn, she realized there were too many pieces of this puzzle that still weren’t fitting together, too many loose ends. And it was time to start tying up some of those loose ends. It was time to talk to Oliver LaForce.

Heading off again, she cut a path through the crowd and crossed Ocean Avenue, hurrying her pace just ahead of the squad cars. All around her onlookers were angling for better views of the oncoming parade. A police officer blew his whistle at her, motioning for her to clear off the street, so she quickened her pace to a trot, with the Lightkeeper’s Inn squarely in her sights.

As she’d expected, Oliver was busy — very busy. She found him in the front lobby, greeting guests and directing staff members. Robbie was behind the check-in counter, dealing with a heavily bejeweled woman who held a small white-haired dog loosely in her left arm. Alby hurried past with a handful of papers, seeming to barely recognize her. The place was hopping.

Candy walked right up to Oliver and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hi. We need to talk.”

He turned to look at her. It took him a few moments for his face to register recognition. “Candy? What are you doing here?”

“I need a few minutes of your time.”

He frowned. “I’m sorry, but as you can see, that’s quite impossible today. We’re very busy.”

“Oliver, we need to talk now.”

He gave her an annoyed look. “If you call the office and make an appointment, I’ll be glad to see you tomorrow or Wednesday afternoon.”

“This can’t wait. It’s about” — she leaned forward and whispered — “Charlotte Depew.”

At the mention of Charlotte’s name, his face pulled down into a deep frown. “What makes you think I know anything about her?”

“I don’t know if you do,” Candy said, her voice still low, “but I know the judging at the cook-off on Saturday was tainted, and I know Charlotte should have won.”

“Won?” Oliver scrutinized her with his small, dark eyes. “I didn’t have anything to do with that. You and Roger Sykes were the judges.”

“You’re right, we were.” She paused. “But I saw your contestants’ sheet with the X across it. You obviously saw it too. Something’s going on here, Oliver. I need to figure out what it is. And I need your help. Of course,” she added, “I could always just go to the police and tell them what I know.”

“Hmm.” He considered that, his eyes darting back and forth across the lobby. After a few moments he pointed down the hallway. “Perhaps we should talk privately in my office.”

“Perhaps we should.”

She let him take the lead, since she didn’t want to appear as if she knew the way. Halfway down the hall, he headed through the door into the office suite, angled across the receptionist’s area, and entered his office. His loafers brushed across the thick carpeting as he walked to his desk, moving around it as he glanced down at several messages left for him. Standing behind the desk, he quickly sorted through them with elegant, manicured fingers. “Sit down,” he said without looking up. “But close the door first.”

She did as he requested. When she had settled into one of the dark red leather-upholstered chairs in front of his desk, he sat himself, folded his fingers together in front of his chin, and looked up at her. “Now, what’s this all about?”

Candy came right to the point. “The cook-off contest.”

“What about it?”

“Someone tried to rig the results.”

Oliver’s brow fell. “That’s a serious charge — especially since you were one of the judges. How exactly were the results to be... rigged, as you call it?”

“By changing the order of numbers assigned to the contestants. There was a sheet on Robbie’s clipboard — ”

“Ah yes, the sheet.”

“So you know about it?”

“Of course I know about it.”

Candy nodded. It was time to show her cards. “So you were the one who put that big black X across the sheet and wrote the words fake list at the top? Right?”

Oliver took the longest time to respond. He appeared to be running a number of scenarios through his head, searching for the best way to answer. Finally he leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. “Yes, in fact, I did.”

Candy wasn’t surprised he’d done it, but she was surprised he confessed to it so readily. Finally she was starting to get some answers. “So, you x-ed out the sheet because you suspected the list had been tampered with,” she said, more as a statement than a question.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t create a new sheet and change the numbers back to their original order?”

He shook his head. “There was no time. When I discovered there was a problem, it was too late in the morning and too close to the judging.”

“What made you realize something was wrong with the list?”

Oliver motioned dismissively with his hand. “Simple. It wasn’t my handwriting. I assigned those numbers to the names myself, though Wanda helped me distribute the lists.” He stopped and eyed her closely, as if he suspected that’s where she was getting her information. But he let his suspicions pass for the moment and continued. “It was a fairly close re-creation, of course. No one else would have noticed it. But I did. The numbers weren’t shaped properly. It was plainly obvious to me. But it caught me off-guard. As I studied the numbers more closely, I realized the arrangement was off. Two of them had been switched.”

“Let me guess. The numbers for Charlotte Depew and Wanda Boyle.”

Oliver looked impressed. “Well, well, well. Now how would you know something like that?”

“I keep my eyes open.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I bet you do.”

Candy pressed forward. “So, you knew the numbers had been switched. How did you handle it?”

“Well, as I said, there was no time to create a new physical list. But it didn’t really matter. Since only those two numbers had been transposed, I simply had to remind myself to reverse those numbers mentally if required later. Hence the X across the sheet and the note to myself. But in the end it didn’t make any difference, did it, since none of the contestants in the top three was involved in the... rigging? When you and Roger chose your top three, I double-checked the names and numbers on Robbie’s sheet to make sure I was right. There was no crossover, or tainting, as you call it, to affect the outcome.”

“I don’t believe it,” Candy said.

“What?”

“You said something to Roger about it, didn’t you?”

That’s the part that had taken her a while to figure out — Roger’s odd behavior at the cook-off. Why had he purposely steered away from the cinnamon-flavored stew? Everyone else who had tasted it had considered it good enough to win awards. So why hadn’t Roger?

In the end, after talking to Wanda, Candy had come to agree with her. Charlotte Depew’s cinnamon-flavored recipe should have won that contest, just as it had done the previous thirteen times it had been entered. That was the point of the whole thing, wasn’t it? It’s why Charlotte — or whoever had stolen that recipe, and more than likely murdered Mr. Sedley — had done it. For the silly recipe, as Wilma Mae had called it.

What had the elderly woman said? Candy thought back to the morning she had interviewed Wilma Mae, which had been just a few days ago, but seemed on the other side of a chasm of time now, separated by the