She’d expected the joint to be busy, but at this time of day, in the early afternoon, the tavern was sparsely populated. A few stalwart denizens clung precariously to their bar stools. Rosie, the waitress, gave her a bored wave.
Most of the tables and booths were empty. But as Candy suspected, she saw one patron seated in his favorite spot.
Captain Mike occupied the back booth, sitting alone, nursing a half-full mug of beer.
He was reading a battered old copy of a mystery novel by John D. MacDonald, squinting at it in the dim barroom light. As she approached the booth he looked up, his eyes glinting. “Ah, here you are. I was wondering if I’d see you today.”
Candy slid into the booth opposite him, giving him a guarded smile. “Hi, Captain Mike. You were expecting me?”
He responded with his subtle maritimer’s shrug. “I had an inkling. You are, after all, a detective.”
She tilted her head and appraised him. “People keep telling me that.”
“Probably because it’s true.” Captain Mike folded down a corner of the paperback novel, slapped it closed, and slid it off to one side. “You proved that last night. That was a mighty brave thing you did, facing down that criminal like you did.”
“There was nothing brave about it,” Candy confessed. “I almost got myself killed — again. And Bob Bridges too. If you and your friends hadn’t showed up when you did... well, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here today. I owe you my life, Captain Mike — which makes the reason for my visit here today much more difficult.”
“Ahh. And why would that be?” he asked, taking a sip of his beer and squinting at her over the rim of the mug.
“Well, there are a few small things I still haven’t been able to figure out.”
“I see. Like what?”
Candy shifted in her seat. “Like who moved Mr. Sedley’s body, for instance.”
Captain Mike studied her. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“Well, parts of it don’t make sense, do they? You see, according to the police, Mr. Sedley didn’t die in the basement. He was killed somewhere else in the house, and his body was moved to the basement. So how did it get there? Did Charlotte move the body? Perhaps — but she wasn’t a big woman. In fact, she was fairly petite. Could she have moved it by herself? Possibly. Possibly not.”
Mike shrugged. “He couldn’t have weighed that much. She could have dragged him down there.”
Candy nodded in agreement. “She could have. But there weren’t any marks on the floor, anything to indicate the body had been dragged down the stairs or from room to room. It just doesn’t seem likely to me.”
“So you think she had help moving the body?”
Candy evaded the question. “Then there’s the issue of the tarp.”
“The tarp?”
“The one Mr. Sedley’s body was wrapped in,” Candy clarified. “According to the police, it didn’t belong to Wilma Mae. It must have been brought there by someone else — presumably the murderer. I noticed an almost identical tarp in Bob Bridges’s maintenance shed out at the lighthouse yesterday. At first I thought he was the one who had killed Mr. Sedley and wrapped up the body in a similar tarp he had stashed in the back of his truck — or something like that. But that doesn’t make sense either.”
“Why not?”
“Well, Bob didn’t kill Mr. Sedley, did he?”
“Maybe they were working together. Maybe Bob didn’t do the actual killing. Maybe he just helped Charlotte move the body.”
Candy shook her head. “I thought about that. But I was with Bob yesterday, in the shed and up in the tower. I looked into his eyes. I just don’t believe he was involved with anything like that.” Candy paused, leaned forward, and said in a voice barely above a whisper, “So do you want to tell me what
“Me?” Much to her surprise, Captain Mike laughed. “What makes you think I had anything to do with it?” He quickly drained the rest of his beer mug and signaled to Rosie for another. Almost as an afterthought, he flicked a finger toward Candy. “You want one too?”
“No thanks. Anyway, it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“What does?”
“Well, you, to be honest. You’re the most likely candidate. You volunteer at the museum, so you knew everyone out there, including Mr. Sedley.”
“We worked different days,” Captain Mike informed her.
“Okay, but you knew Charlotte pretty well, right? You two seemed to get along okay. You’ve probably been in Bob’s maintenance shed a few times. You had access to the tarps. And you’re a pretty big, strong guy — certainly capable of moving a body.”
He looked her hard in the eye, and she looked right back at him.
“I’ve been all through it, Captain Mike, backward and forward,” Candy said after a few moments. “And the way I see it, there are only two people who could have taken that tarp to the house and helped Charlotte move the body. Robbie’s one. Obviously he’s been in the maintenance shed before. He could have grabbed a tarp and taken it over to Wilma Mae’s house. And he certainly had the motivation. But I just don’t think he could have done something like that. He’s a sweet kid, although he’s got a bit of a gambling problem. But I don’t think he has it in him. On the other hand — ”
“On the other hand,” Captain Mike finished for her, “you think I do?”
Candy waited.
Captain Mike considered her logic. “There’s someone else, you know. Roger Sykes could have helped her out. We know he was behind the whole thing, and we know he killed Charlotte.”
“That’s true,” Candy agreed, “and you’re right — he could have. But he didn’t. Last night, when he was talking about framing Bob for the murders, he tossed a roll of fishing line at us. He was planting evidence in the shed. But Roger never mentioned the tarp. A similar one was sitting right there in the shed, in the back corner, but he didn’t even look at it. It was another piece of crucial evidence he could have used to frame Bob. But he didn’t. Why not? I think it’s because he didn’t know about the tarp — or at least he didn’t know it came from Bob’s maintenance shed.”
“So that leaves me.”
“That leaves you,” Candy confirmed. “So, I repeat my question — do you want to tell me what really happened?”
Rosie arrived with the mug, which she set down before Captain Mike. “Enjoy it,” she told him.
“Like it was my last one,” he replied with a wide grin. He raised the mug toward the waitress and then toward Candy, as if in salute, and took a long swig as Rosie walked off. He waited until she was back behind the counter, out of earshot, before he spoke again. “It was an accident, you know.”
“Excuse me?” Candy said, not understanding.
“Old Man Sedley’s death. It was an accident, pure and simple. At least, that’s what Charlotte said.”
Candy nodded sagely. “How did it happen?”
“Well, Sedley surprised her, you see. She couldn’t get Bob or Robbie to steal the recipe for her, so she decided to do it herself. And, of course, she botched it up — let someone see her entering the building. She had on that stupid disguise, which she thought would let her snoop around unnoticed. But Sedley caught her all right, he sure did. He must have recognized her or something, because he backed up too fast and hit his head on the banister. He went down hard, or so Charlotte said. She tried to help him up, but he thought she was attacking him. Things got out of hand — and he fell down the stairs. Broke his neck. Probably died instantly.”
“And that’s when she called you,” Candy said.
Captain Mike nodded. “She did.”
“And you agreed to help her.”
“I did. I’d borrowed one of Bob’s tarps the day before. I just took it out of the shed — never even had a chance to tell Bob I took it from him, so he wouldn’t have known. I’d planned to return it right away, but I never got the chance. When Charlotte called, well, she was pretty frantic. All worried about going to jail for the rest of her life. She begged me to help her.”
