Candy seriously thought about it, but in the end decided her own bed would be best. “I don’t suppose I could borrow your car one more time—that is, unless you want to drive me home?
Yawning again, Maggie handed her the keys. “I’m not going anywhere tomorrow, honey. Just drop it off whenever you get a chance.”
Doc was asleep when she got home, so she locked up the house, turned out all the lights downstairs except for a night light, made sure the fire had burned down far enough, and went upstairs to her room.
The house was cold, since they kept the thermostat turned down at night to save on heating fuel. So Candy changed quickly into her flannel pajamas, turned out the light, and crawled into bed.
But a few minutes later she turned the light back on, put on her slippers and bathrobe, and padded downstairs to her desk in a corner of the living room.
She powered up her laptop, waited until it booted up, and logged on to Wanda Boyle’s site.
She couldn’t get all the unanswered mysteries out of her head, and one in particular bothered her. Preston Smith. What had become of him? Why had he been acting so strange lately? And what was his role in everything that had happened this weekend?
Some of the answers, she thought, might be online.
She’d intended to search back through Whitefield’s postings to see if Preston had left any other clues there. But she was surprised to find a new posting from him, dated only minutes earlier.
She read over the message several times. Again, it seemed obvious that it was meant for her. But what did it mean?
She thought of calling Ben but decided against it when she checked the clock on the fireplace mantel behind her. It was quarter to one. So, instead of calling him, she sent him an e-mail, explaining everything and telling him that she’d call him in the morning to discuss.
By the time she’d logged off, shut down the computer, and climbed back up the stairs to her bedroom, her cell phone was buzzing. She’d set it down on the top of her dresser and forgotten to turn it off or charge it.
It was a text message from Ben:
Forty-Five
Candy awoke in the morning with the odd feeling that the previous day had been nothing more than a bad dream—or, more accurately, a recurring nightmare—until she’d dressed and headed downstairs. Doc had left part of the Sunday paper sitting on the kitchen table. A quick scan of the headlines revealed that, yes, indeed, it had all been for real. Felicia Gaspar was under arrest for the murder of Victor Templeton, and Gina Templeton was in custody as an accomplice.
Candy just shook her head at the truth of it all. She found it very dismaying. Sometime during the night she’d come awake with the disturbing thought that, for the third time in less than two years, she’d had a gun pointed at her and been threatened with her life. For more than ten years, she’d lived and commuted in metro Boston, renting places just outside of the city in suburbs like Arlington and Watertown, and never once had anything remotely like this happened to her. But here she was in safe, quiet, off-the-beaten-path Cape Willington, Maine, and she’d already stared death in the face three times too many.
What was happening to her beloved little town? What was happening to
Even now, as she stood next to the kitchen table, feeling off center and mentally drained after the intensity of the past few days, it was a troubling thought, causing a cold shudder to run through her bones.
Thoughtfully she dropped into a chair, taking a few minutes to scan the rest of the front-page story. It was a fairly accurate account of how Felicia had killed Victor, and of how she and Gina had dragged the body out to the woods on the toboggan and rolled it into a gully, where it had been discovered by a local hermit named Solomon Hatch, currently being sought by police for questioning.
Candy herself was not mentioned in the article, thankfully. Liam Yates was in the process of being released, it said. Chief Darryl Durr was quoted, singling out Officer Jody McCroy for special recognition in the investigation, specifically for following up an important lead, which Candy suspected was that phone call from Maggie.
There was no mention of a hatchet, or Preston Smith, or Duncan Leggmeyer and the award for the hatchet- throwing contest, or of the feud between Victor and Liam. And, of course, there was nothing about a white field, or Whitefield, or even whitefield, as Ben had referred to it in his text last night, though all his characters were lowercase, which he’d probably done for the sake of expediency.
So what, or who, was Whitefield?
Candy checked the clock on the kitchen wall. Quarter to nine.
It was time to find out.
On this particular morning, she and Doc reversed their typical roles. He was staying home, working his way through the Sunday edition of the
She found Ben, as promised, sitting in a booth by the window at Duffy’s Main Street Diner, waiting for her. He’d already ordered coffee for both of them and an English muffin for her—with homemade blueberry jam on the side, of course. For himself, he’d ordered up hash browns and a breakfast steak, doused heavily with Juanita’s special hot sauce.
When he looked up and saw her, he waved, half rose, and pointed to the seat opposite him. “Good morning,” he said. “Hope I didn’t get you out of bed too early on a Sunday.”
Candy pulled off her knit cap, shaking free her hair, and tugged off her gloves as she slid into the seat. She managed to smile for him. “How could I turn down a chance to have breakfast with you? Besides, I wasn’t sleeping very well anyway.”
He gave her a worried look. “You’ve had a rough couple of days, haven’t you, with Solomon, and the body, and now the whole thing with Gina and Felicia? You want me to order something else for you?”
“No, I—”
“Good morning, Candy!” said a voice to her side. Candy looked up at Juanita, the waitress.
“I brought you something, just out of the oven,” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “A fresh-baked blueberry muffin.” She set a plate down in front of Candy and gave her a quick pat on the arm. “Nice job solving that murder, Candy! This is on the house. Let me know if you need anything else,” she said earnestly and dashed off.
Candy stared at the muffin and let out a sigh. “I think I’m developing a reputation around town.”
Ben shrugged. “People are grateful. You’ve done a lot of good things lately. People like to show their appreciation.”
“Yes,” Candy said, folding her hands on the table and leaning forward toward him so she could speak in softer tones, “but why are these things happening to me at all? Why have we had five murders in less than two years— and why have I been involved in all of them? I’m beginning to get a little”—she leaned her head even closer to his —“
Ben held her eyes for the longest time, and she wondered what was going on inside his head. Finally, he said, with all seriousness, “So you think there’s a connection between all these murders.”
It was a statement, not a question, and it caught Candy off-guard. “What? No, I… you think there’s a connection?” she asked, trying hard to hold back her astonishment.
He calmly sliced off a thin piece of breakfast steak, swathed it across a puddle of hot sauce, and plopped it
