Candy Corn Murder (6 page)

Chapter Five

W
here had the month gone? wondered Lucy, staring at the calendar on the kitchen wall. Only a little more than a week until Halloween and she still hadn't found a ninja costume for Patrick. It wasn't for the lack of trying: she had dutifully scoured every possible source in the area and had come up empty. She considered trying the Internet but feared she'd left it too late and the costume wouldn't come in time. She could pay for overnight shipping, of course, but something held her back, some little puritanical vestige that wouldn't allow her to spend a lot of money on anything as frivolous as a Halloween costume.

No, she decided, she would make the ninja costume. She used to sew all the time when her own four kids were young, and had turned out quite credible gypsies and pirates, even a slinky cat. Unfortunately, she realized, the sewing machine she'd used back then was gone, the victim of a household purge in which she'd followed the advice of an organizing guru and foolishly tossed everything she hadn't used in a year. She did, however, have some black bedsheets left over from Elizabeth's Goth phase, and a couple of old sewing patterns had escaped the purge, including one for children's pajamas, which she'd recently found stuffed in her sewing basket. And she was pretty sure that Miss Tilley had a sewing machine, an old treadle model to be sure, but a genuine Singer.

When she arrived at Miss Tilley's little Cape Cod–style house, she was admitted by Rachel, who was actually Miss Tilley's home-care aide but maintained the fiction that she was just a helpful friend. Miss Tilley herself was seated at the dining room table, bent over an elaborate cut-glass canister.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asked, setting the pattern and fabric down on the lovely old pine table, which glowed from its weekly rubdown with lemon oil.

Miss Tilley looked up from the pad of paper where she was scrawling numbers with a fine new pencil. “We're computing the volume of this canister.”

“And why exactly is it important?” she asked, taking a seat.

“Because if I know the volume, then I can figure out how many pieces of candy corn it can hold.”

Light was beginning to dawn over Marblehead, as Lucy remembered a very similar canister that was presently sitting in Country Cousins, filled with candy corn.

“You want to win the contest?” she asked.

“I surely do,” said Miss Tilley with a snap of her head. “I have entered it every year for sixty or more years, and I have yet to win. And this year I happen to need a new winter coat, and I am quite taken with those ultralight down models they've just come out with at Country Cousins.”

“They cost two hundred twenty-nine dollars,” said Rachel, who was filling a cup measure with candy corn, counting the pieces one by one.

“Pricey,” said Lucy.

“Indeed, but it's quite probably the last winter coat I will ever need,” said Miss Tilley with a dramatic sigh.

“I'm pretty sure you'll outlive both of us,” said Rachel, adding an exclamation. “Darn! Now I lost count. Again.”

She poured the candy corn out and started over.

“I was hoping to use your sewing machine,” said Lucy, patting the pattern. “I want to adapt this pajama pattern to make a ninja costume for Patrick.”

“You'll need to add a hood,” said Rachel, studying the picture on the pattern front. It showed a boy and a girl, clearly fresh from their evening baths, clutching teddy bears as they headed off to bed in their homemade pajamas with no trace of Disney princesses or Marvel superheroes.

“Pretty simple, I think,” said Lucy, sketching a design on one of Miss Tilley's discarded sheets of paper covered with numbers and formulas. “I think you've got this wrong. Volume isn't two pi r. It's pi r squared h.”

“That does ring a bell,” said Miss Tilley, applying herself with fresh energy to her computations.

“And pi is three point one four, not three point one six.”

“Aha!” exclaimed Miss Tilley, whose white hair was now springing out around her head in the fashion of Albert Einstein.

“I'm so impressed,” said Rachel. “I never knew you were a mathematical genius.”

“Neither did I,” said Lucy. “I guess there are some things you never forget, like how to ride a bicycle.”

“I managed to forget,” said Rachel, dumping out the candy corn and starting to count all over again. “I can't seem to remember anything these days.”

“Your brain gets stuffed, so you have to prioritize,” said Miss Tilley. “The longer you live, the more experiences you have to remember. You have to decide to forget what's not important, because it takes up too much room.”

“At what age do we begin to store memories?” asked Lucy, wondering if Patrick would remember the months he spent with his grandparents while his parents were gone.

“My earliest memory is a piece of chocolate my grandmother gave me,” said Rachel. “It was wrapped in blue and silver foil and looked like a little purse.”

“How old were you?” asked Lucy.

“Maybe three or four. I'm not sure,” said Rachel.

Lucy turned to Miss Tilley. “What about you?”

“I remember my mother burning her hand on the coal stove in the kitchen,” she said. “I might have been two.”

“You're just trying to one-up me,” said Rachel. “I don't believe you remember anything that happened when you were two.”

“Me, either,” said Lucy. “My first memory was playing with my father. He pretended to be a bear and chased me, and it always ended with a big bear hug.”

“Sweet,” cooed Rachel. “How old do you think you were?”

“Probably three.”

“I think that's about right. I think that's when memories begin to stick,” said Rachel. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, yesterday I interviewed Buck Miller. He's called Buck now, but we remember him as Sam Miller's son, little Sam. He's come back to Tinker's Cove to work in the family business. He's got all sorts of big ideas.”

“That's nice,” said Rachel.

“So the prodigal son returns,” said Miss Tilley.

“But the funny thing is, when I asked him if it was difficult to come back to the place where his father died, he said he didn't really remember his father.”

“Impossible,” said Miss Tilley. “He was in kindergarten when his father was murdered. He would certainly have some recollection of his father.”

“He said his father was distant, always working. . . .”

“Well, that's a memory, isn't it?” asked Rachel. “And besides, Sam's death was followed by a traumatic event. His mother snatched him out of school and dragged him off to Europe, didn't she?”

“Paris,” said Miss Tilley. “Marcia went to Paris. As I recall, she couldn't leave town fast enough. I don't think she even stayed for the funeral.”

“Well, she was probably terrified,” said Lucy.

“Traumatized, certainly,” said Rachel. “Fight or flight is a powerful instinctive reaction. It's not rational.”

Lucy turned to Miss Tilley. “You were friends with Emily Miller, weren't you?” she asked, naming Tom and Sam's mother. “It must have been a terrible time for her, losing her son like that.”

“She never said,” replied Miss Tilley. “She never spoke about Sam, or her husband, Old Sam, or even her grandson. I thought it was a trifle odd even then, when people were much more reserved than they are now.”

“Families have different ways of dealing with grief,” said Rachel, who was a psych major in college and had never got over it. “In some families emotions are never expressed. Everything is just stuffed down tight inside.”

“Let's see that pattern of yours, Lucy,” said Miss Tilley, shoving her calculations aside and deftly changing the subject. “I oiled the Singer last week, when I mended a pillowcase, and it ran just fine.” She clucked her tongue. “They sure don't make things like they used to.”

 

Later that afternoon, when Lucy picked up Patrick at Little Prodigies, she was bursting with her big news. “Patrick!” she exclaimed, helping him put on his Windbreaker, “I'm making you a ninja costume for Halloween, and it's almost finished. You can try it on when we get home.”

Patrick stamped his foot and tossed his backpack on the floor. “You can't make a ninja costume!”

“Sure you can,” said Lucy, retrieving the backpack and taking him by the hand. “You'll see.”

“I don't want a homemade costume!” he yelled, yanking his hand away.

“But, Patrick,” she began, bending down so they were face-to-face, “the stores are sold out. I can't buy a ninja costume, but I can make one. It's going to be really great.”

Patrick wasn't convinced. “Homemade costumes stink!” he snarled, marching to the door.

Lucy ran after him and grabbed him by the shoulders. “You have to wait for me to sign out,” she reminded him.

“I don't want to! I'm going!”

Lucy was horribly aware that Patrick's tantrum had drawn the attention of Heidi Bloom and another teacher, as well as a couple of parents, who were all watching the mini-drama. Action was definitely called for.

“No, you're not,” said Lucy, snatching him up and hugging the squirming child close. “Please sign out for me,” she panted in Heidi's direction as she hurried out the door to the car, carrying forty-odd pounds of wriggling boy.

After dumping him in his booster seat with perhaps a bit too much force, Lucy snapped the seat belt in place. “That's quite enough of that, young man,” she said. “And if you don't want a homemade costume, you'll have no costume at all!”

She slammed the door and was reaching for the handle of the driver-side door when she realized Heidi had run out of the building after her.

“Um, Mrs. Stone, this is the schedule for the next two weeks,” she said, proffering an orange sheet of paper. “Halloween and all,” she added.

“Oh,” said Lucy, exhaling and straightening her jacket, which had become twisted. “Thank you.”

“And, Mrs. Stone, I just want to mention that you really shouldn't threaten Patrick. He's much too young to understand cause and effect, so threats and bribes are really meaningless to children his age. It's preferable to explain a situation and let him know the sort of positive behavior you expect.”

From inside the car Lucy heard Patrick crying.

“Thanks for the advice. I'll keep it in mind,” she said, sliding behind the wheel. She switched on the ignition and pulled away from the curb, determined to get home as fast as possible.

“It's okay, Patrick,” she said, glancing in the rearview mirror and seeing her grandson's face, red and wet with tears. “Everything's going to be okay.”

Patrick clearly wasn't convinced; he cried all the way home and stopped only when Libby bounded up to greet him and licked his face.

“Hi, fella,” said Bill, joining them in the driveway. “What's the trouble?”

Patrick was half crying and half laughing and was trying to both hug the dog and push her away.

“One of those days,” said Lucy by way of explanation. “It started over his Halloween costume, but I think he's really beginning to miss . . .”

“Right,” agreed Bill with a nod. “Come on, buddy. Let's check on Priscilla and see how much she's grown.”

Patrick sniffed and rubbed his eyes with his hands. “Can I measure her?”

“Sure,” said Bill. “And we'll give her a drink of water, too.”

He and Patrick went off in the direction of the garden, and Lucy gathered up Patrick's things, his backpack and jacket and the day's art project, as well as the sewing and the groceries she'd bought and her purse, and went inside. She was putting the groceries in the fridge when she heard the crunch of gravel in the driveway that announced somebody's arrival. She looked out and recognized the same pickup truck she'd seen at the Conservation Commission hearing, the one with a scuba bumper sticker. She assumed Sara had gotten a ride home with Hank, and when several minutes passed with no sign of the passenger door opening, she assumed her daughter was apparently in no hurry to say good-bye.

Lucy had hung up the jackets, emptied Patrick's lunch box and backpack, turned on the oven, and put the half-sewn ninja costume away before Sara came inside, her cheeks quite flushed. Bill was right behind, demanding, “Who was in that truck with you?”

“Just Hank,” she said, then disappeared up the back stairway.

“Who is this Hank?” he demanded, yelling up the stairs.

“He's the president of the scuba club,” said Lucy, taking a package of ground beef out of the fridge. “Meat loaf for supper,” she added, naming his favorite dish.

“Have you met him?” he asked, taking a seat at the round golden oak table.

“Not exactly,” said Lucy. “But I saw him at the Conservation Commission meeting a few weeks ago. He seems very nice, well spoken, and polite.”

The door opened, and Patrick came in, along with Libby. “I'm hungry,” he said, and Lucy, who was mixing up the meat and egg and bread crumbs with her hands, asked Bill to give him some mini carrots. Soon he was also seated at the table, under the watchful eye of Libby, who adored carrots and was hoping one or two might come her way.