Candy wasn’t thinking about the storm, though. She was thinking about Sapphire Vine and Ray and that red-handled hammer. Something Maggie had said to her on the phone that morning kept nagging at her, tickling away at her brain: Ray wouldn’t hurt a fly, Maggie had said. He tears up when he steps on a cockroach.
Maybe so. But they had found his hammer at the scene of the crime. And according to Finn Woodbury, someone had seen Ray’s truck in front of Sapphire’s house last night, when Sapphire had been murdered. What had he been doing there? And could he really have hit her with his hammer?
Candy recalled the way Ray had cradled the hammer when she had handed it back to him that day in the barn. Suddenly she knew what had been bothering her all day.
Ray loves that hammer, she thought. The other day, he treated it like some sort of precious thing, almost as though he were in love with it. He didn’t even want me to touch it. He didn’t want it to get damaged at all. So if he loves that hammer so much, why would he muck it all up by hitting Sapphire in the skull with it? And why would he leave it there after he hit her?
None of it made any sense.
Candy started up the Jeep. She decided she had to talk to Maggie again, to try to sort it all out. She drove to the intersection of River Road and the Loop, made a left turn, then another left onto Main Street and a right onto Ocean Avenue. It could be difficult to find a parking space along here in the afternoons, but she lucked out and found a spot practically right in front of Stone & Milbury’s. Ignoring the pelting rain, she jumped out of the Jeep and dashed toward the insurance agency’s front door.
It was only a dozen steps or so, but she was soaking wet by the time she made it inside. “Whoa, is it raining hard out there!” she exclaimed as she walked through the reception area and turned the corner into Maggie’s office.
She stopped dead. Three curious faces looked up at her.
Maggie sat behind her desk, with two stacks of papers in front of her. A middle-aged couple sat in front of the desk, facing Maggie.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Candy said in surprise. “I didn’t realize you had customers.”
With the height of professionalism, Maggie rose and gave the couple a pleasant smile. “Excuse me for a moment,” she said to them. “A friend of mine. I’ll be right back.”
Taking Candy by the arm, Maggie steered her out of the office.
“I’m so sorry,” Candy said in embarrassment as they walked back into the reception area.
“Don’t worry about it.” Maggie dismissed the interruption with a wave of her hand. “We’re just finishing up some things. Where’ve you been? You look like a drowned rat.”
“It’s raining.”
Maggie scowled. “You know, they have these neat little things called umbrellas. Fabulous invention. They do a great job of keeping you dry when it rains. You might want to check one out sometime.”
“Ha, ha, very funny. Listen, I have to talk to you about something.”
“Can’t right now, honey. I’m in the middle of a meeting.” She leaned a little toward her office and called to her clients in the friendliest possible tone, “I’ll be right there!”
“When are you free?” Candy asked.
“I’m here ’til five thirty.”
“Meet for drinks after work?”
Maggie considered that for a moment. “Don’t know if I can, but I’ll try. Call me around five, okay?”
“Got it. Good luck with your customers.”
“And you get yourself an umbrella, girl. Better yet, take this one.” Maggie reached toward a twenty-year-old metal coatrack that stood near the door. A battered old black umbrella was leaning against one of the posts. “Someone left it and never came back for it, so it’s yours.”
“Thanks, you’re a doll.”
“That’s what all my boyfriends tell me,” Maggie said with a grin as she sashayed back into her office.
Outside, the wind was whipping so hard that it threatened to rip the umbrella right out of Candy’s hand. Before she knew what was happening, she was blown sideways down the street. She ducked into an alcove and stood there for a moment in the shelter of an overhang, fiddling with the umbrella, which had flipped outward, and trying to gather up the courage to make a run for her Jeep. Then a door pushed opened behind her and a tall, thirty-something man emerged from the building, nearly running her over in his haste.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” the man said, looking up.
“No, it was my fault. I just had to take refuge from the rain for a few minutes.”
The man stopped beside her and squinted up into the sky. “It is coming down heavy, isn’t it?” He looked over at her. “I love summer storms like this, don’t you?”
“Well, yes,” said Candy a bit bashfully, “but it doesn’t do much for one’s appearance.” She pushed some of the wet locks off her forehead.
He laughed pleasantly. “You look just fine to me.” He studied her a little closer. “You’re Candy Holliday, aren’t you? You live with Doc out at Blueberry Acres?”
“That’s right. Have we met before?”
He held out his hand. “Name’s Ben Clayton.”
“Oh! We have met, I think,” Candy said, shaking hands with him, “though for the life of me I can’t remember where. You work for the Cape Crier, right?” The Cape Crier was the local weekly newspaper-The Voice of Downeast Maine, as its tagline claimed. It went out to readers in parts of two counties-Hancock and Washington.
“Actually, I’m the editor,” Ben said.
“Oh, that’s right. I’ve seen your name in the paper. What a fun job.” But as the words left her mouth, the smile fell from her face as she realized what that meant. “Oh! You must have worked with Sapphire.”
His expression, too, took on a measure of seriousness. “I was her boss.”
“I didn’t realize,” Candy said. “I’m so sorry.”
Ben nodded. He was taller than she was, just shy of six feet, she guessed, and lean, with a rugged face and light brown hair that he had let grow a bit long in the back. He wore jeans and an open-collar blue shirt, and carried a scuffed, dark brown leather satchel. Candy wondered why she hadn’t noticed him much around town before.
“Sapphire’s death was a shock to us all,” he said heavily. “It’s tragic how something like that can happen so quickly, and someone you knew and liked and worked with is just… gone, just like that.”
“It’s terrible, just terrible,” Candy agreed, eyes downcast.
They both were silent for a moment. Then Ben asked, “Were you a friend of hers?”
“An acquaintance,” Candy hedged. “We knew each other, but we didn’t hang around socially or anything like that.”
“Hmm,” Ben said, watching her.
What does that mean? Candy wondered.
“You know, this may sound strange,” he continued after a moment, “but it seems to me that Sapphire didn’t have many friends. Oh, she knew a lot of people-I was always astounded by how many people she knew-but she didn’t seem to be close to many of them.”
Candy wasn’t sure how to reply to that. “Well,” she responded tactfully, “maybe it’s because she was such a… unique personality.”
“You can say that again.”
They stood awkwardly in silence for a moment. Finally Candy looked out at the sky. “Well, I guess I should make a run for it…”
She straightened out the umbrella and turned up her collar, preparing to brave the rain, but then Ben touched her by the elbow. “Candy, before you go, can I ask you something?”
Candy looked at him curiously. Oh my God, she thought as a small smile flickered across her face, is he gonna ask me on a date? Swallowing, she said, “Sure.”
“This may sound odd,” he began, then hesitated. He seemed to reconsider what he was about to do. “Maybe… maybe I should wait until another time.”