B. Haywood - Town in a Lobster Stew

Candy brought the conversation back to where it had started. “And now the recipe’s been stolen?”

The color in Wilma Mae’s face faded, and she pursed her lips sadly. “Yes.” For a moment she seemed on the verge of tears. Then, abruptly, she slapped her knees and rose. “And we’re going to get it back, aren’t we?” She pointed toward the ceiling. “Come with me. It’s time we investigated the scene of the crime.”

Taking Candy by the hand, Wilma Mae led the way out of the living room, into the hallway, and up the staircase. She talked as she went.

“This house was built about eighty-five years ago by an architect named John Patrick Mulroy, who used to work out of Portland with John Calvin Stevens and Francis Fassett before he opened his own office in Bangor around 1890. Later, when he was in his sixties, he retired here to Cape Willington and designed several homes in town, including this one. It’s one of his simpler designs, as he built it inexpensively for a friend of his. Still, it has some lovely angles. Like many of his contemporaries, Mulroy had an affinity for the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles, and you can see that in certain areas of the home.”

At the top of the stairs Wilma Mae headed left and entered the front bedroom. She stopped in the center of the room and turned toward Candy.

“He also,” she said dramatically, raising a finger, “had a predilection for creating secret hiding places in the homes he built.”

“Ooh.” Candy’s eyebrows rose in interest. “That sounds like it would make a good story for the newspaper. So there’s a secret hiding place up here?”

“There is! Can you guess where it is?”

Candy scanned the room, trying to find a likely spot. To her left was a twin poster bed with a white coverlet, and beside it a forty-year-old sewing machine on an antique table. A fairly new chocolate brown wing chair and an antique floor lamp occupied the far corner, toward the street. In front of Candy, between two tall windows, stood another dark wood and glass cabinet displaying more ketchup bottles.

But the most impressive feature of the room was to Candy’s right. Built-in shelves and drawers, bracketed between corner cupboards, occupied the entire wall. Some older books were neatly arranged on a few of the upper shelves, but mostly ketchup bottles of all sizes, shapes, colors, and ages occupied the myriad shelves, nooks, and crannies. There must be hundreds of them , Candy realized, impressed with the extensiveness of the collection.

She took one more quick look around the room, then turned back to Wilma Mae. “I’d say it’s either in that cabinet or in these shelves over here.”

Wilma Mae nodded approvingly and motioned toward the shelves. “You’ve hit right on it. Mulroy had an affinity for built-in drawers, cupboards, and shelves,” she explained. “He worked with one of the local cabinetmakers to create built-ins like these in many of the homes he designed here at Cape. It was one of the things that originally attracted me and Mr. Wendell to this home. When we moved in, some of the shelves needed repair, so we brought in a carpenter. He’s the one who discovered the secret hiding spot. There’s actually a hidden drawer — a document box it’s called, used for hiding wills, contracts, deeds, that sort of thing. Here, I’ll show you.”

She moved toward the shelves as Candy watched in fascination. Wilma Mae gently removed a long, narrow drawer sandwiched horizontally between rows of shelves and bottles. She set the drawer aside on a small table and reached inside the drawer housing, feeling along the side with her fingertip. When she found a slight depression, she pressed it firmly. A spring-loaded drawer popped out of the bottom of the housing.

“Oh, neat.” Candy stepped closer for a better look. The secret drawer was perhaps eighteen inches wide and about two inches in height — not large enough for a thick book, but certainly capable of holding a number of documents. The drawer, Candy saw, was empty.

Wilma Mae took a step back, folding her hands at her waist. “That’s where I kept the recipe all these years. I’ve rarely taken it out of there. Mr. Sedley never cared to see it again, and since I quit entering the cook-off, I haven’t had much reason to look at it either. I’ve taken it out a few times to show a close friend or two. But I always returned it to its proper hiding place right away.”

“What did it look like?” Candy asked. “Was it just on a single sheet of paper? Or in a recipe book?”

“Oh no. It was written in an old gray ledger, dear. A ledger of his recipes, or formulas, as Mr. Sedley used to call them many years ago. He listed a general description and precise ingredients for each formula he created. He also noted cooking times, temperatures, special preparation details, and the date he created each one. But he kept other things in his ledger as well — financial information, notes on the weather, his observations of guests and staff, that sort of thing. I believe he also tried his hand at sketching and writing poetry, but he kept those in a different book.”

The next obvious question came to Candy. “When did you notice the ledger was missing?” She looked around for her pen and reporter’s notebook and realized she’d left them on the kitchen table. Drat! She always seemed to be without those items when she really needed them. She’d been trying to work on that but still hadn’t quite acclimated herself to a reporter’s habits.

“Well, that’s the interesting part,” Wilma Mae said. “Before yesterday, I hadn’t checked that drawer in the better part of a year. But lately several people have been coming around the house asking about the recipe. This one woman in particular has been here three or four times, just in the past week or two. She wanted to see the recipe, and she was very adamant about it. I told her I wasn’t showing it to anyone at this time and that it was stored away in a safe place. And then she started grilling me about it. She wanted to know everything about it — who created it, when it was created, what the ingredients were. She even asked me about Mr. Sedley and my relationship with him.” Wilma Mae became a little flustered. “She was a very prying woman, and to be honest, she made me quite nervous. She said if I didn’t tell her what she wanted to know, she’d find out herself. I started worrying about the recipe, so I checked the secret drawer late yesterday afternoon, when I got home from running my errands. Something about the house just didn’t feel right. That’s when I discovered it was missing.”

“And that’s when you called me,” Candy confirmed. “So you think this woman might have had something to do with the recipe’s disappearance?”

“I think it’s certainly possible, don’t you?”

Candy thought about that. “Perhaps — but how would she have known where you had it hidden?”

Wilma Mae shook her head. “I’m not sure about that. As far as I know, only myself and Mr. Sedley knew about that compartment — and the carpenter who discovered it, of course.”

Candy’s mind was working. “What was this woman’s name — the one who’s been bugging you the past few weeks?” she asked after a few moments.

“Well, I think she said it was Wanda Boyle.”

Candy felt a prickling on her arms. “Wanda Boyle? You’re sure she said her name was Wanda Boyle?”

Wilma Mae nodded. “Yes, I believe so. Why? Is something wrong?”

Candy’s shoulders slumped, and her chin fell to her chest as she let out a long breath. “Oh boy.”