“Oh.” Candy bit her lip, trying to think fast, but nothing much came to her. She shrugged, attempting to remain calm. “I guess I just heard it somewhere. It’s not that important. I wanted to ask you about Ray…”
“Ray?”
“Yeah, I know he helped you out on Saturday and-”
“Candy, does this have anything to do with that murder?”
“Murder?” Candy repeated parrotlike, putting on her best surprised look. “You mean Sapphire Vine? Why, no, of course not, I, I…”
Ned rose abruptly. “I don’t think I should answer any more questions,” he said stiffly.
Candy felt her heart thump in her chest as she rose too. “Why not?”
He let out a long breath through his nose. “I don’t think I should say anything about it right now.”
“Have the police talked to you?”
“Candy…” Ned’s voice trailed off as he crossed his arms and admonished her with his eyes.
“Okay, okay,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry if I’ve said anything to offend you. I was just trying to get some info for my story.”
“Well…” He rolled his eyes. “No harm done, I guess, but I just can’t say anything else about what happened that day.”
“Oh no, of course not, I completely understand,” Candy said awkwardly, and made her way to the door.
I guess that was a stupid thing to do, she thought as she climbed back into the Jeep and drove home.
On the other hand, it had worked. She had found out an important piece of information about that day-Ned had lost his hammer. She sensed she was on to something.
In a moment of clarity, she knew what she had to do next.
When she got home, she walked around to the back of the barn. Doc was working on the coop, attaching the new chicken wire with a staple gun. “I’ll be right there to help, Dad,” she called to him, then turned, walked into the kitchen, and picked up the phone.
She called Maggie first. “Can’t meet you today,” Maggie said hurriedly. “Just got too much to do. Tomorrow, lunch?”
“Sure. I’ll meet you at Duffy’s at twelve thirty. I have a lot to tell you.”
“I can’t wait. See you then.”
After she hung up, Candy took Ben’s card from her pocket and dialed his number. “Hi, it’s Candy Holliday,” she said when he answered the phone at the other end.
“Oh, hi, Candy. What’s up?”
“About that job you offered me? I’ve decided to accept it.”
SEVENTEEN
The next morning, Candy and Doc climbed into the Jeep Cherokee and headed up to Route 1, where they turned east toward the town of Machias, the county seat. The day was overcast, the remnants of the previous day’s storm still clinging stubbornly to the coast, which only added to their somber moods.
They were silent for most of the forty-minute drive, which took them through small settlements and past boulder-strewn blueberry fields ripe for the harvest. Candy kept the radio tuned to an AM news station, though they heard more static than news as the signal faded in and out. They were eager for the latest information about the investigation into Sapphire Vine’s murder, but there was nothing to be heard, which only made Candy more morose and Doc more restless.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office was located on Court Street just off Machias’s main street, in a red brick building next to the Superior Court. They parked in the side visitor’s lot, checked in at the front desk, and at just after ten o’clock were shown into an empty room by a young, straight-backed, mustachioed officer named Wayne Safford. “You can wait for Ray in here,” he told them. “He’ll be right in.”
It was a small, windowless, cheerless room with a freshly waxed brown and white tile floor and walls painted a dull institutional beige. At its center was a narrow folding table surrounded by four metal folding chairs. A U.S. flag stood in one corner, next to a flag of the great State of Maine, with its moose and pine tree, farmer and seaman, set on a blue field under the North Star. There was no other furniture in the room-no pictures or photos on the walls, no one-way mirrors. The place smelled old yet efficient.
“Well,” Doc said as he dropped into one of the chairs with a grunt, “at least they let us in to see him. I thought they’d give us a hard time.”
Candy nodded her agreement and stood with her arms folded across her chest, hugging her shoulders. The air conditioning in the building must have been set on high, or perhaps it was all funneled into this small room. Feeling chilled, she wished she had brought a sweater with her. But who travels with a sweater when it’s eighty degrees outside?
She thought of sitting down beside Doc but realized she was too nervous for that, so she paced the perimeter of the room, looking for anything the least bit interesting to occupy her time, and failing miserably.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait too long. Sooner than she expected, the door swung open and Ray shuffled in, his head bowed low. He looked terrible. Even when he saw Candy and Doc, the most he could manage was the most pitiful smile she had ever seen. He sank heavily into a chair opposite Doc. His gaze dropped to the table and stayed there.
“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” Officer Safford said. He left, closing the door firmly behind him.
A loud click told them the door locked itself as it shut.
Doc tried to ignore that disconcerting fact. “Well, how ya doing, Ray?” he said in a lively tone that sounded much too forced. He managed a smile as he leaned closer to the handyman. “Are they treating you all right?”
Ray shrugged, a quick movement that showed defeat. He let out a long shuddering breath. “Oh, they been okay to me.” His bottom lip puffed out a little. He seemed to be fighting back tears.
Candy felt the despair, embarrassment, and confusion radiating off him in waves. “Are they feeding you, Ray?” she asked, looking worried. “Are you eating?”
Ray nodded, though he still stared at the tabletop. “I had donuts and flapjacks for breakfast. They even gave me some blueberry syrup. I been eatin’.”
Candy went to stand beside him, and she couldn’t help reaching out and placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Ray,” she said softly, “do you want to tell us what happened?”
That did it. The tear ducts opened, the emotions bubbled up, and he shook like a house in a hurricane. “I… I didn’t do it,” he stuttered between sobs. “I didn’t do that terrible thing they said I did.” He glanced up at Candy, a horrified look in his eyes. “How could they say I did it? They don’t know me. I could never do somethin’ terrible like that.”
“I know, Ray, I know,” Candy said sympathetically.
“We know you didn’t do it,” Doc added, “but what happened? How’d you get mixed up in this mess?”
“I don’t know, Doc, I just don’t know,” Ray wailed, shaking his head frenetically and dropping it into his open hands.
“Try to stay calm,” Candy told him, sinking into the chair beside him and looking at him intently. “Take a few deep breaths.”
He listened to her. He straightened and took a breath, then another, shaking with grief the whole time. That calmed him a bit, though the distress he felt was still evident on his face. “Why do they think I did it?” he asked finally, looking over at her, his eyes reddened.
Doc leaned forward in his chair, his hands clasped together on the tabletop. “Well, for one thing, Ray, they have witnesses who say they saw your truck at Sapphire’s house Monday night, right before she was murdered,” he explained as gently as possible.
Ray nodded as his lips trembled. “Yeah, that’s right. I was there all right. She left me a note. Said she wanted me to come over at nine thirty and help her fix something. It was late, but I went over there anyway, just like she said. But when I got there she got mad at me for some reason. She yelled at me and told me to go home. I didn’t know what to do. So I left. But I didn’t kill her.”