Town in a Lobster Stew

Twenty

The subject line at the top of the e-mail read, Fwd: For Candy Holliday’s Eyes Only.

Just as Ben had said.

She’d seen these types of e-mails before. Usually they were complaints. But it didn’t look like Wanda’s handiwork this time. She usually wanted anyone and everyone to read her letters and e-mails — as many people as possible. Never before had she labeled one of her messages this way.

Candy took a few moments to mentally prepare herself. When she felt she was ready for whatever she might read, she positioned the mouse and tapped the laptop’s touchpad. The e-mail opened. She dropped her gaze to the text in the lower pane.

It was short and to the point: The wrong person won the cook-off. Contact me if you want to know what really happened.

It was signed Cinnamon Girl.

Candy felt goose bumps rise on her arm as a cool breeze blew down from the blueberry fields and across the porch. She rubbed at her arms and leaned back.

The wrong person won the cook-off? At first glance, she’d say Ben was right — it did sound like a complaint, at least on its surface.

But it was the sign-off that gave her pause.

Cinnamon Girl.

Was that a coincidence? Or was someone trying to tell her something? Was there a hidden meaning in the name?

There was only one way to find out.

Still, she hesitated, knowing she should think carefully before taking a step deeper into the mystery. Sometimes when you stepped in too far, it became impossible to step back out, as she had found out. The last time she’d taken such a step, she had put herself and others in danger. Was she certain she wanted to put herself in possible danger again?

This had all started with a stolen lobster stew recipe, she reminded herself — a fairly nonthreatening mystery. Now someone had died. That changed the situation completely, and it made her pause, as any person with a dab of common sense would.

In the end, though, she knew she had to do it. But she resolved to be smarter about it this time.

She clicked the reply button, which opened a new window, and looked at the name in the address field’s To line. It was addressed to CinnamonGirl, followed by a series of five numbers, at a Gmail account.

Candy typed, Okay, I’m interested. What do you know? and before she could think about it any more, she hit the send button in the upper left corner of the screen.

She waited.

Doc walked past again, still whistling and carrying a glass of iced tea. She hadn’t even noticed him going into the house. He walked off the porch and headed across the gravel driveway, past the Jeep and his old Ford pickup, to the barn again.

Candy decided to follow him — at least partway. A little walk would help clear her mind, so she could focus on her article. She rose, set the laptop on a nearby wooden bench, and started after her father, though she angled off behind the barn, where she kept her chickens.

Ray Hutchins had built the coop for her a year and a half ago, and had expanded it for her last fall, in partial payment for all she had done to help him out of a tight spot, he’d told her at the time. She’d had fifteen chickens last year but had lost two of them over the winter, so she was down to thirteen, which always seemed to be tempting fate — not that she was a superstitious person, she always reminded herself. She planned to expand her flock again this year when she and Doc drove to the annual Common Ground Country Fair up in Unity.

She’d had foxes try to get into the coop several times, so she and Doc had reinforced the chicken wire around the sides and lower edges of the coop. She also made sure the chickens were in their roosts and closed up every night. And she always kept Doc’s shotgun close at hand, in the kitchen closet, just in case.

Today the chickens were happy and chattering away as usual, oblivious to the cares and worries of those in the world around them. They pecked and scratched eagerly as she threw a few handfuls of feed onto the ground in the coop. She checked their water and looked around for eggs, though there were only a few. She’d already collected a bunch earlier in the day and decided to leave these until evening.

When she got back to the porch, she checked her e-mail and found another message from Cinnamon Girl. This one was equally short:

I can’t tell you this way. We have to meet.

Candy puzzled over that. Was security an issue? Or was she being drawn out somewhere for a reason?

Again, she thought, there’s only one way to find out.

She hit reply again and typed, When do you want to meet?

It took less than a minute to get an answer. This afternoon. 4 p.m.

Where? Candy sent back.

Backstage at the Pruitt Opera House, came the reply.

Candy hesitated briefly. She had a history with that place. Finally she typed, How will I find you?

I’ll find you.

Candy thought a few moments before sending her next message. It’s Sunday afternoon. The place is probably locked up. How will I get in?

She waited a long time for a reply. Back basement door. Come alone.

Candy groaned.

She knew which door Cinnamon Girl meant. She had used it before, on a rainy night the previous summer, when she’d entered the opera house after hours to hunt for a murderer.

The Pruitt Opera House on Ocean Avenue also doubled as Town Hall, since the town’s offices were located in the building’s basement, where they’d been since the late 1970s. Candy knew the layout, and she knew how to get from the back basement door to the auditorium’s backstage area.

At this time of year, the auditorium was used mostly for movies on Friday and Saturday nights. Earlier in the spring, a regional Shakespeare group had staged its annual production on the opera house’s stage — The Tempest this year. And the high school would hold its graduation ceremonies in the auditorium in mid-June. In early July, a series of performances by local folk musicians would take place on the stage, after which the auditorium would come into heavy usage for the second half of the summer, as the town’s thespians geared up for the annual musical production in August.

Candy’s uneasiness returned as she pondered the last message from Cinnamon Girl. Why the anonymous e-mail? And why the secretive meeting at a public yet relatively inaccessible place? Why not meet in a coffee shop or in Town Park or in a parking lot somewhere? Why all the subterfuge?

For a fleeting moment she thought about skipping the meeting. Why put herself in harm’s way? For all she knew, Cinnamon Girl could be a psycho.

And yet, her instincts told her the opposite.

It was that moniker that eventually decided her. It was a subtle clue, designed to let her know that whoever this person was, she (Candy assumed it was a she, though she supposed it could be a he) knew certain details about Wilma Mae’s recipe — and might know a lot more.

Candy checked her watch. It was a quarter to three.

If she was going to do this, she had to get moving.

She rose again, set her laptop aside, and crossed to the barn. Doc was fiddling around on a workbench, listening to a game on the radio. He looked around when Candy walked in. “What’s up, pumpkin?”

“Do you have Finn’s number? I need to give him a call.”

“Finn?”

“Yeah, I... have a question for him about the opera house.”

Doc gave her a quizzical look. “What are you up to?”

She crossed her arms. “Just my job, Dad. So, Finn’s number?”

After a few moments he shrugged. “It’s somewhere on my desk. Check the Rolodex on the right-hand side. I think I put his old business card in there.”

She started back toward the house. “I’m going to give him a call, then I’m going out for a while. I have some research to do.”

“Just be careful, pumpkin. It’s a tough world out there.”

“Don’t I know it, Dad.”