Town In a Lobster Stew (5 page)

But the most impressive feature of the room was to Candy’s right. Built-in shelves and drawers, bracketed between corner cupboards, occupied the entire wall. Some older books were neatly arranged on a few of the upper shelves, but mostly ketchup bottles of all sizes, shapes, colors, and ages occupied the myriad shelves, nooks, and crannies.
There must be hundreds of them
, Candy realized, impressed with the extensiveness of the collection.

She took one more quick look around the room, then turned back to Wilma Mae. “I’d say it’s either in that cabinet or in these shelves over here.”

Wilma Mae nodded approvingly and motioned toward the shelves. “You’ve hit right on it. Mulroy had an affinity for built-in drawers, cupboards, and shelves,” she explained. “He worked with one of the local cabinetmakers to create built-ins like these in many of the homes he designed here at Cape. It was one of the things that originally attracted me and Mr. Wendell to this home. When we moved in, some of the shelves needed repair, so we brought in a carpenter. He’s the one who discovered the secret hiding spot. There’s actually a hidden drawer—a document box it’s called, used for hiding wills, contracts, deeds, that sort of thing. Here, I’ll show you.”

She moved toward the shelves as Candy watched in fascination. Wilma Mae gently removed a long, narrow drawer sandwiched horizontally between rows of shelves and bottles. She set the drawer aside on a small table and reached inside the drawer housing, feeling along the side with her fingertip. When she found a slight depression, she pressed it firmly. A spring-loaded drawer popped out of the bottom of the housing.

“Oh, neat.” Candy stepped closer for a better look. The secret drawer was perhaps eighteen inches wide and about two inches in height—not large enough for a thick book, but certainly capable of holding a number of documents. The drawer, Candy saw, was empty.

Wilma Mae took a step back, folding her hands at her waist. “That’s where I kept the recipe all these years. I’ve rarely taken it out of there. Mr. Sedley never cared to see it again, and since I quit entering the cook-off, I haven’t had much reason to look at it either. I’ve taken it out a few times to show a close friend or two. But I always returned it to its proper hiding place right away.”

“What did it look like?” Candy asked. “Was it just on a single sheet of paper? Or in a recipe book?”

“Oh no. It was written in an old gray ledger, dear. A ledger of his recipes, or formulas, as Mr. Sedley used to call them many years ago. He listed a general description and precise ingredients for each formula he created. He also noted cooking times, temperatures, special preparation details, and the date he created each one. But he kept other things in his ledger as well—financial information, notes on the weather, his observations of guests and staff, that sort of thing. I believe he also tried his hand at sketching and writing poetry, but he kept those in a different book.”

The next obvious question came to Candy. “When did you notice the ledger was missing?” She looked around for her pen and reporter’s notebook and realized she’d left them on the kitchen table. Drat! She always seemed to be without those items when she really needed them. She’d been trying to work on that but still hadn’t quite acclimated herself to a reporter’s habits.

“Well, that’s the interesting part,” Wilma Mae said. “Before yesterday, I hadn’t checked that drawer in the better part of a year. But lately several people have been coming around the house asking about the recipe. This one woman in particular has been here three or four times, just in the past week or two. She wanted to see the recipe, and she was very adamant about it. I told her I wasn’t showing it to anyone at this time and that it was stored away in a safe place. And then she started
grilling
me about it. She wanted to know
everything
about it—who created it, when it was created, what the ingredients were. She even asked me about Mr. Sedley and my relationship with him.” Wilma Mae became a little flustered. “She was a very prying woman, and to be honest, she made me quite nervous. She said if I didn’t tell her what she wanted to know, she’d find out herself. I started worrying about the recipe, so I checked the secret drawer late yesterday afternoon, when I got home from running my errands. Something about the house just didn’t feel right. That’s when I discovered it was missing.”

“And that’s when you called me,” Candy confirmed. “So you think this woman might have had something to do with the recipe’s disappearance?”

“I think it’s certainly possible, don’t you?”

Candy thought about that. “Perhaps—but how would she have known where you had it hidden?”

Wilma Mae shook her head. “I’m not sure about that. As far as I know, only myself and Mr. Sedley knew about that compartment—and the carpenter who discovered it, of course.”

Candy’s mind was working. “What was this woman’s name—the one who’s been bugging you the past few weeks?” she asked after a few moments.

“Well, I think she said it was Wanda Boyle.”

Candy felt a prickling on her arms. “Wanda Boyle? You’re sure she said her name was Wanda Boyle?”

Wilma Mae nodded. “Yes, I believe so. Why? Is something wrong?”

Candy’s shoulders slumped, and her chin fell to her chest as she let out a long breath. “Oh boy.”

At Wilma Mae’s invitation, Candy took a few minutes to examine the secret drawer. She could see nothing unusual about it, other than the fact that it was ingeniously designed. She played with the mechanism that released it, pushing the drawer into its hiding spot, then popping it back out a few times.

She leaned in for a closer look. There were no tool or scratch marks, no signs of forced entry, nothing to indicate the drawer had been broken into. Nothing, as far as she could see, to indicate anything had been stolen from it—or that anything had ever been inside, for that matter.

That meant whoever had stolen the recipe—
allegedly
stolen the recipe, Candy reminded herself—must have known how to open the drawer.

Could Wanda Boyle have done such a thing? Would she have broken into Wilma Mae’s home, climbed those stairs, found this bedroom, and activated the release mechanism that opened the drawer?

Why would she have wanted the recipe in the first place?

As Candy pondered these questions and continued to study the drawer, she said
hmm
several times, causing Wilma Mae to look at her expectantly. But since she wasn’t a forensics expert, she didn’t know what to do next. Look for fingerprints? Hair samples? Fibers? Way out of her league. She was hardly an investigator of any sort, even in the broadest definition of the term. She still found it amusing that people around town thought of her as a detective at all—which, of course, she wasn’t. She knew that better than anyone.

And here was the proof.

A helpful note from the alleged thief would have solved the problem—perhaps with an address and phone number to make things easier? In the end she had nothing concrete, no theories or suppositions to offer the elderly woman.

As they headed back downstairs, Candy tried to sort out all she had just heard and seen.

Wilma Mae was quite a tale spinner—that much was true. But was anything else?

Candy was torn. The practical part of her couldn’t help thinking that maybe Wilma Mae had simply misplaced the ledger that contained the recipe—left it out on another shelf somewhere, or in the back of another drawer, or given it to someone and simply forgotten she’d done so. People forgot where they put things all the time. Even Candy did it, all too often, much to her frustration. And Wilma Mae was well into her eighties. These sorts of things happened.

That was the simplest explanation. But was it the right one?

Maybe Wilma Mae
was
telling the truth. Maybe someone—Wanda Boyle?—
had
stolen the recipe from the elderly woman . . . but again, Candy asked herself, why?

There seemed to be only one logical explanation: the Lobster Stew Cook-off. Wilma Mae had said the recipe was valuable. It probably was, Candy realized—in more ways than one.

Because, ultimately, it was an
award-winning
recipe.

That could make it very valuable to certain people in town. But was it worth the risk of stealing it from the home of an elderly woman? That was the part that nagged at her the most. Who could, or would, do such a thing? Who would be that desperate?

Candy almost let out a quick laugh. Knowing this town, she could probably think of a half dozen people, and not even break a sweat doing it.

In some strange way, it was all starting to make sense to her. Winning the annual cook-off was a fairly prestigious achievement around town—the newspaper devoted substantial portions of two issues to it. There was no doubt some people were petty enough to steal recipes from one another if it gave them a competitive edge. These sorts of things happened in small towns all the time. Didn’t they?

And it certainly could have happened here in Cape Willington, Maine, given its overabundance of unique characters.

Couldn’t it?

Candy felt a quick chill go up her spine, a mixture of nervousness and excitement, as she realized she might be onto something. Call it intuition, a sixth sense, or what-ever, but she had to admit she was inclined to believe Wilma Mae.

And that made her pulse quicken, knowing what—and who—she faced.

Wanda Boyle
?
Why, of all people, does it have to be her?

Candy shook her head and absently brushed back her honey-colored hair.

She knew what she had to do.

Standing in the kitchen, she told Wilma Mae she’d dig around, ask a few questions in town, and see what she could find out.

Wilma Mae was beside herself with gratitude. “I can’t tell you how happy I am,” the elderly woman said enthusiastically. “Oh, I can pay you! Mr. Wendell left me a little money. And I know Mr. Sedley and myself would both be so grateful if you could get the recipe back for us. It would be like finding a lost member of the family—that’s how much it means to us.”

“Mrs. Wendell, I could never take your money,” Candy said honestly. “Besides, I don’t know if I’ll find out anything at all. Just give me a few days to poke around. I’ll give you a call over the weekend and we can talk then.”

Wilma Mae laid a thin-boned hand on Candy’s arm and gave her a sweet smile. “I knew you were the right person to call. I don’t know how to thank you.”

Candy felt touched. “I haven’t done anything yet . . . but I’m glad to help if I can.”

She thanked Wilma Mae for the tea, dropped her pen and reporter’s notebook into her purse, and said her good-byes.

Outside, a cool wind blew past her, tossing about her hair and carrying with it the fresh, newborn smell of spring. The chilly breeze pushed her gently along the front walkway, but the midday sun warmed her as she climbed into her old teal-colored Jeep Cherokee, which was starting to show its age. She cranked up the engine, backed out of the driveway, and drove toward the center of town, her mind still occupied with thoughts of Wilma Mae, Wanda Boyle, and the missing lobster stew recipe.

It took her only a few minutes to reach Ocean Avenue, a gently sloping central boulevard lined with quaint shops, restaurants, and other businesses. It ran in length only for a long, stretched-out block, from Main Street at its northerly end to Town Park, the Lightkeeper’s Inn, the Coastal Loop road, and the sea at its southerly tip. Its most notable feature was the Pruitt Opera House, which stood in stately fashion halfway down the avenue on the northern side.

Candy glanced at the opera house as she turned onto Ocean Avenue. It had been there, on the building’s high widow’s walk, that one of the most harrowing experiences of her life had occurred on a rainy night ten months ago. Even now, the memory of that raw, windy night gave her goose bumps as images of the life-and-death struggle flashed through her mind.

Quickly she shook away those thoughts and turned her attention back to the matter at hand.

Finding a parking spot along Ocean Avenue in July and August, at the height of the busy summer tourist season, could be a tricky business, but she found plenty of spaces today. It was the Thursday before the Memorial Day weekend—the end of spring but not quite summer—and the bulk of the incoming visitors had yet to arrive.

Still, Candy could sense a definite air of excitement around town. Cape Willington nearly doubled in size each summer, as the seasonal people arrived to open up their cabins and camps, and out-of-state cars clogged the streets and took up all the good parking spots. At the height of the summer season, in July and August, Ocean Avenue buzzed with conversations and laughter as the sidewalks, shops, cafés, and rustic seaside inns filled up with families and couples looking to spend a few days or weeks out of the day-to-day rat race of the rest of the world and enjoy some much-needed vacation time right here in Candy’s very own cozy coastal village in Downeast Maine.