Town in a Lobster Stew

Twenty-Three

“Who were you expecting? Elmer Fudd?” Wanda made a smug sound in the back of her throat. “Surprised?”

Candy had to admit she was, even though she’d started to figure it out when she first heard the shadow’s low voice. “Yes, actually, I am.”

“Well good. I didn’t think you’d be so easy to fool, not with your reputation as a hotshot detective.” She held up a hand to shield her eyes from the flashlight’s beam. “Now could you get that light out of my eyes before you give me a headache?”

Candy did as the other woman asked, turning the beam down toward the heavily varnished floor. The shadowy grays returned, engulfing them. It was eerily quiet backstage, where the curtains muffled most sounds, and Candy let her voice grow a little louder. “What kind of game are you playing, Wanda?”

“Is that what you think? This is a game?” Wanda’s tone became defensive, and her words turned hard-edged. “Well it’s not. I’m sitting on some hot information, and I think it could be tied to Mr. Sedley’s death.”

Candy’s annoyance at Wanda quickly fell away. “What kind of information?”

“First, I have to know a few things. Consider it a little information sharing. You tell me what you know, and I’ll tell you what I know. But you have to go first. That day you came to the museum. Were you there to see Charlotte... or me?”

When Candy hesitated to answer, Wanda went on. “Let me guess. You were there because you were looking for me, right?”

Candy considered her answer but could see no point in acting coy any longer. “Yes.”

“I thought so. I knew something was up when you came snooping around that day. So let’s figure this out. The recipe was stolen from Wilma Mae. She asked you to find it for her. And you must have come right out to the museum. So what can we deduce from that?”

“I don’t know,” Candy said with a slight smile. “What can we deduce?”

Wanda leveled a finger at her. “I’ll tell you what. You came out to the museum because you thought I was the one who stole the recipe. Isn’t that right?”

Candy pursed her lips. “I suppose that could be true.”

“You suppose?”

“Okay, Wanda, what do you want me to say? Yes, if you must know, I thought you could be involved. And yes, that’s why I was out at the museum. You were the most likely suspect, and Wilma Mae’s convinced you took the recipe from her.” She paused, looking hard at Wanda. “So, as long as we’re making confessions... did you?”

“Did I what? Steal the recipe?” Wanda snorted, though it might have been a laugh. It was hard to tell. “I won’t lie to you. I’ve thought about it for a long time. I’ve been trying to get my hands on that recipe for years. Those two old coots didn’t need it anymore. What good was it to them? They’d both retired from the competition. It was a total waste. So yeah, I’ve been after it for a while. It’s time Wilma Mae passed it on to someone else who can use it. I even offered to pay her for it. I offered him money too... back when he was alive. But it didn’t work. For whatever reason, they just couldn’t seem to part with it.”

“Maybe that’s because it has sentimental value to them,” Candy said, irritation creeping into her tone. “You’d know that if you talked to her. But I guess you did talk to her, didn’t you? You just didn’t listen to her.”

An uncomfortable silence hovered for a few moments between the two of them. Eventually Wanda broke the silence by letting out a breath of air through her nose. “I suppose Wilma Mae told you I visited her recently.”

“She mentioned that, yes,” Candy confirmed. “She said you visited her several times over the past few weeks. You know you scared the poor woman half to death.”

Wanda’s body shifted uneasily. “That was never my intention. But I was getting impatient. I was trying to push her a little. But mostly I just wanted to know more about that recipe.”

“Why? What’s so important about it?”

Again, Wanda snorted. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’re still new around here, aren’t you? You have no idea how much some folks want to win that contest.”

“But why?” Candy asked again, trying to understand.

“Because of the trophy,” Wanda snapped, “and the prestige that goes with it. You don’t know this, because you haven’t lived here long enough, but if you have that cook-off trophy sitting on a shelf in your home, you can write your own ticket in this town. Suddenly you know all the best people. You get invited to all the right parties. You’re someone people look up to. Winning that trophy means a lot in this little town. A lot. There are people who would do anything to get their hands on it.”

“Anything?” Candy asked, her voice suddenly quiet. “Even murder?”

“Even murder,” Wanda confirmed, and then she shut her mouth abruptly, as if she fully realized what she’d just said. She also seemed to realize where they were. Her head twisted left, toward the auditorium, as if she could see through the curtains and out toward the balcony. She appeared to be listening for something. After a few moments, she turned back toward Candy. “Did anyone see you as you came in here?”

“No. The place is empty.”

“And you came alone, right?”

Candy swallowed and a moment later hoped Wanda had missed that little giveaway. “I came in here alone,” she said, knowing it wasn’t a complete lie. She’d left Finn in the parking lot and had walked into the building by herself.

Wanda gave her a suspicious look but finally shrugged. “We can’t stand out here in the open talking. This way.”

She flicked on her flashlight and, pointing it toward the floor, headed off through an opening in another curtain, then along the building’s rear wall, to a storage room at the very back of the stage area. She walked in, keeping the flashlight pointed low. “We can talk privately in here.” She stopped at the center of the room, turned, and waved to Candy. “Come on in. Shut the door.”

Candy paused just outside the doorway, peering inside. She flicked on her own flashlight and shined it around the room. It was just an old storage area, perhaps eight by ten feet in size. The place looked dusty, cold, and largely unused. White swaybacked shelves along the left wall were stacked with dusty props. Moldy boxes were piled in a back corner, and a table and two metal chairs were pushed up against the right wall. Old posters hung on the bare plastered walls, with peeling paint up along the ceiling and in the corners.

She entered the room cautiously, taking only a few steps inside, and somewhat reluctantly reached around to close the door behind her. She crossed her arms, leaving the flashlight on, so its beam illuminated the shelves on her left and gave them some light. “So what’s this all about? Why all the secrecy?”

“Because,” Wanda said, “in case you hadn’t noticed, someone’s been killed. That’s pretty serious business. It means there’s a murderer in this town. And I have no intention of getting murdered myself.”

“Why would someone want to murder you?”

Wanda let out an annoying sound to indicate her impatience. “I told you. I saw someone using Mr. Sedley’s recipe yesterday. And that means I might know who stole the recipe from Wilma Mae’s house.”

Candy felt a chill.

Whoever stole the lobster stew recipe must have murdered Mr. Sedley.

“You think that person had something to do with Mr. Sedley’s death?”

“Do you?” Wanda asked, volleying the words back to her.

Candy shook her head thoughtfully. “I don’t know. It’s possible, I guess.”

“Exactly. That’s why I have to be cautious.”

“So who is it?” Candy asked point-blank, uncrossing her arms. She was suddenly very curious to hear Wanda’s revelation.

“You have to promise first,” Wanda said quietly, “to keep this to yourself.”

Again, Candy found herself becoming irritated. “There you go again, playing games.”

“And I told you, I’m not playing games.” Wanda’s tone was hard and unyielding. “I came to you for a reason. I could have gone to the cops.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Wanda hesitated for a moment, as if reluctant to say the next few words. “If you must know, it’s because you’re the only person around here who seems to know what’s going on. And, well, you’re the only person I thought I could trust.”

That caught Candy off-guard. She rocked a little bit, as if lightly slapped on the shoulder. “Really. You trust me? After all those e-mails and letters you’ve been sending to the paper, after all the accusations and threats to get me fired? You trust me?”

“I know. Strange, isn’t it?” An uncompromising smile crossed Wanda’s face, disappearing as quickly as it had come. “I hate to admit it, but it’s true. I had to tell someone about this. I thought of everyone I know. But there’s no one else I could completely trust. I know I disagree with you a lot. I still think you’re too new in town to do what you’ve been doing at the paper. You don’t deserve that job.” She paused, composing herself, letting her rising anger pass. “But I’m not going to hold that against you right now. The truth is, you do have experience with this sort of thing. And that’s what I need right now. I need a detective. I need someone who knows what they’re doing. And I need someone to help me figure out what’s going on in this town.”

Wanda paused as she took in a deep breath. “If it’s who I think it is, it’ll cause a huge stink. So I have to make absolutely sure that if I accuse someone, they’re one-hundred-percent guilty. I don’t want to get caught with egg on my face. I can’t afford to look like a fool. But someone’s been up to no good, and I think I know who it is.”

“Is it someone we both know?”

“It is. The last thing I want to do is accuse an innocent person. So you have to agree to keep this between us until we get to the bottom of it.”

Candy considered that. After a moment, she nodded slightly. “Okay, we’ll keep this just between you and me — at least for now. So, who is your suspect?”

“I’ll tell you,” Wanda said slyly, “but before that, I have another question for you: what do you think happened to Mr. Sedley?”

Candy had been puzzling it out, and she had a theory. She decided there was no harm in sharing it with Wanda. “My guess? He saw someone breaking into Wilma Mae’s house — probably the same person who stole the recipe. He tried to stop them — and got himself killed.”

Wanda’s face dropped into a frown as she listened. “I thought you’d say something like that. And you know what that means, don’t you?”

“No. What?”

“If you thought I was the one who stole the recipe, it means you also thought I killed Mr. Sedley, right?” Her gaze locked onto Candy’s, demanding an answer.

Candy was silent for a tense moment as the two women faced each other across the dimly lit room. Finally Candy nodded. “Something like that, yeah. But it’s like you said. Nothing makes much sense right now, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t. But just so you know, I didn’t do it. I didn’t steal Wilma Mae’s recipe, and I didn’t kill Mr. Sedley. Okay?”

Candy watched Wanda’s face as she spoke, and had to admit she believed the other woman. “Okay. I’m glad we cleared the air about that. But it still leaves a lot of unanswered questions.”

“It sure does. And I have another one for you: what was the secret ingredient in Mr. Sedley’s recipe?”

Candy’s gaze narrowed. Her suspicions returned. “Why don’t you tell me? It sounds like you already know, given the name on your e-mails.”

“Yeah, I thought that would get your attention.” Wanda gave her a smug look. “It was cinnamon, right?”

“And how would you know that,” Candy asked, “unless you actually did steal the recipe?”

“Because I do my research,” Wanda said sarcastically. “I know how to dig around when I need to find out something.”

“And where do you do your digging?”

Wanda answered quickly. “At the historical society.”

Candy’s brow fell as she thought about that. “In the archives? But Charlotte said you were up there doing research on architects in Cape Willington, for the summer program.”

“That’s where I started, yes, but I couldn’t find what I wanted. I managed to locate the original plans for a few of the historic homes in the area, including one or two designed by John Patrick Mulroy. But I didn’t find the plans I was looking for.”

“Let me guess. You were looking for details about Wilma Mae’s house. You heard she’d stashed the recipe in a secret hiding spot, and you were trying to find out where it was.”

Wanda studied her for a moment. “You know about that?”

“I know about lots of things. For instance, I know a carpenter who worked on renovations at Wilma Mae’s house discovered a secret drawer in a shelving unit upstairs. And I know your brother Owen is a carpenter. Is he the one who found that drawer and tipped you off?”

Wanda almost laughed. “Owen? A carpenter? Hardly. He did some carpentry when he was a kid but he hasn’t worked in the field for years. He works at the post office in Blue Hill now. But you’re right about the secret drawer. I’ve heard rumors about it.”

“And you were looking for Mulroy’s plans to see if you could figure out where it was located. Did you find anything?”

“No,” Wanda said promptly, “so I had to take a different route. I knew Wilma Mae and Mr. Sedley won that competition a total of thirteen times back in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. So I figured someone must have tasted that stew. And someone must have written about it.”

When Candy considered that, it made perfect sense. “Ahh. So you went looking for articles in old issues of the Cape Crier.”

Wanda nodded. “The historical society has issues going back to the 1940s. It took a lot of digging around. Most of those old issues are still on microfiche. I spent weeks up in that stuffy old attic, looking for what I wanted. I had to search through dozens of issues going back thirty years.”

Candy had to admit, she admired Wanda’s tenaciousness. “And what did you find?”

“Several references to cinnamon as the secret ingredient. I can give you the issue dates if you want to check them out yourself. It makes for some very interesting reading.”

“So,” Candy said, jumping ahead, “if you knew cinnamon was the secret ingredient in Wilma Mae’s recipe, and you wanted to win the cook-off so badly, why didn’t you just make your own stew using cinnamon?”

“Good point, Sherlock,” Wanda said sarcastically, “because that’s exactly what I planned to do. Until someone beat me to it.”

“Really? Who?”

Wanda gave Candy a crooked grin, relishing the moment. “You’re the detective. Think about it. I spent some time researching lobster stew recipes that used cinnamon as an ingredient, so I had a pretty good idea what to do when I made my stew. I gathered all the ingredients, including the best cinnamon I could find between here and Boston, and I showed up Saturday morning ready to go. But then what should I spy? I’ll tell you — I spotted someone else using cinnamon as an ingredient.”

“Someone else? But I only tasted one stew with cinnamon.”

“That’s right,” Wanda said mysteriously, “but whose stew was it?”

Candy knew the answer. She had seen the list on Robbie Bridges’ clipboard. “It was yours.”

Wanda looked impressed. “What do you know? The detective is right — or at least partially right. It should have been mine. I should have won that contest. But something went wrong. That’s why I’m here talking to you now.”

“But you made that stew, right? You’re the one who used cinnamon as your secret ingredient?”

Wanda looked at her as if she were a teacher correcting a student in school. “No, dummy, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I didn’t have Wilma Mae’s recipe. I didn’t make that stew. But I know who did.”

“Who?”

Wanda paused dramatically, then said with a flourish, “It was Charlotte Depew.”