Maple Syrup Mysteries Box Set 1: Books 1-3

  19

  I’d expected solving Uncle Stan’s murder to feel good—like a Batman-esque, paragon-of-justice, euphoric high. Maybe I should have known better. Batman never seemed particularly happy in any of the movies I’d seen.

  And I hadn’t counted on the killer being a man I’d grown to like.

  Once Mark dropped me off and disappeared on foot down the street, I found myself limping to the convenience store on the corner and buying one of every variety of candy bar they carried. Even the ones with nuts that I hated. A giant slushie and a package of gummy bears may have also been involved.

  I holed up in The Sunburnt Arms, not even answering my phone for the next few days, though I did send my mom a text to let her know I was alive.

  In lieu of a response asking how I was feeling, she wrote back So is there something I should know about this doctor friend of yours?

  He’s married, I texted.

  I didn’t feel her reply of Happily? merited a return text.

  Happily or unhappily didn’t matter. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and I’d deserve whatever I got. I might have eaten my way through enough chocolate to make me look like an acne-ridden teenager again, but I wasn’t completely driven by my hormones.

  By the third night, I was out of the microwave dinners, bag of apples, and bottled water I’d stocked my mini-fridge with when I moved in post-gas leak. It was time to emerge back into the world. Especially since it was also time to make a decision about whether I stayed in Fair Haven or went home. I couldn’t hide out in The Sunburnt Arms forever.

  If I went home, my parents would happily take me back into the firm and revive their hope that I was simply a late bloomer and I’d become a decent lawyer with age and continued instruction. Love—and I did believe they loved me or they wouldn’t have tried so hard—made them blind to the truth. I’d never be more than mediocre.

  My phone rang as I was on my way down the stairs. Erik.

  He’d called once a day since Russ was arrested. He only left a voice mail the first time. I needed to answer before he thought I was brushing him off.

  When I answered, he didn’t ask why I’d ignored his calls. He didn’t mention the missed calls at all. He simply asked how I was.

  And I had no idea how to answer. “Hungry,” I said stupidly.

  “I was going to get around to asking if you’d like to have dinner again soon, but I don’t think that’ll help with your current hunger pains.”

  I might not still be here in a few days, and he deserved to hear that in person. I owed him that much at least for basically turning our first date into an investigation. “Are you busy now?”

  The happiness in his voice as we arranged to meet at A Salt & Battery made me feel like someone had poked me in the heart. Instead of driving there, I walked. I needed to start burning off the chocolate binge.

  He was waiting when I came in, once again at a table where he could keep the wall to his back and his face to the room. He got to his feet and pulled out my chair for me. Like I was special.

  He handed me a gift bag. I held it in my hands, unopened, for an awkwardly long time. It wouldn’t be fair to keep whatever it was if I left, and based on what I’d seen of Erik so far, I was going to want to keep it.

  He shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “It’s a get well gift. I thought about flowers, but this seemed more practical.”

  I peeled back the yellow and pink tissue paper. Inside lay a pale blue scarf and matching set of mittens. They were so soft they could have been made of clouds. I was right. I should have handed it back unopened.

  “Do you like them?” he asked.

  It was such a surreal situation to be facing a strong man who could somehow also seem so vulnerable. In my experience, those two rarely went together.

  “I do.” I pushed the bag across the table toward him. “But I can’t accept them.”

  He nudged them back in my direction. “I knew you might think it was too fast for gifts or something, but I noticed you didn’t have a set when we went out, and you’ll need them for the winters here.”

  If I had bangs, I would have shot a puff of air at them. I was terrible when it came to men. Everything I tried ended up knotted and bungled. “It’s not that at all. But I might not stay in Fair Haven.”

  The waiter came before Erik could answer and took our orders. I decided to try the perch since the menu said it was a local specialty.

  “What changed your mind?” he asked when we were alone again.

  It was such a straightforward question. It caught me off guard. And made me want to tell him the truth. That was probably one of his interrogation skills, but I didn’t care. “Russ.”

  He didn’t probe, just sat there waiting for me to continue when I was ready. Whether through training or natural ability, the man was an excellent listener.

  “I was going to stay because I didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore,” I said. “I didn’t want to defend people who were guilty. It didn’t feel right.”

  “But it doesn’t feel right when you have to bring evidence against someone you wanted to be innocent, either.”

  I nodded. I’d been here before, in this situation, where guilt and innocence didn’t seem to fall in the places they should. Erik was one person who could understand that. As a police officer, he’d probably had to arrest people who he’d rather have set free. “I guess I thought I could escape it here. Like the lines of good and evil would be cleaner here in a small town compared to a city, and I’d be able to tell by looking at them who I could trust.”

  He stretched his hand across the table toward me, palm up. I slid my hand into his.

  He wrapped his fingers around mine. “I don’t think that’s true anywhere. Was that the only reason you thought you’d stay?”

  “Originally maybe, but I like it here. I like being able to walk to places, and I kind of even like people knowing me and wanting to know about my life. In the city, I felt faceless, like I could disappear and most people wouldn’t even notice. I didn’t realize that bothered me until I came here.”

  His lips twitched in his this-is-as-close-as-I-get-to-a-smile way. “That’s certainly not true here.”

  We ate the rest of our meal without coming back to the topic of Russ or of whether I’d stay or go. I got the sense that Erik didn’t want to pressure me. I had to want to stay here for me, not for what might or might not happen between us.

  I don’t know that I’d ever had someone care so much about what I wanted before.

  He drove me back to The Sunburnt Arms after dinner and walked me to the front door. He didn’t try to kiss me. Instead he pressed the bag holding the scarf and mitts into my hands.

  “Just in case,” he said. “If you’re not sure what you want from life yet, this isn’t a bad place to find out. It’s how I ended up here.”

  And then he was gone.

  20

  Early the next morning I packed everything into my car and checked out of The Sunburnt Arms. It was time to go home. I felt a little like a kid who’d figured out that the Easter bunny wasn’t real, which meant that by extension Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy didn’t exist, either.

  Fair Haven wasn’t the enchanted place I’d built it up in my mind to be from Uncle Stan’s praise of it. People here still lied and cheated as much as in DC. And I was no Matlock. I might as well go back to defending people I knew were guilty. At least then all I had to deal with was the dirty feeling it left on my soul. That, at least, was familiar. Perhaps I’d even grow numb to it over time. My parents had.

  I’d call Tom McClanahan once I made it home and tell him to give Sugarwood to whoever he felt would best manage it and support the community. At least that way I wasn’t hurting anyone.

  I climbed into my car and headed for Fay’s house. She was the last one I still needed to say goodbye to before I left, and I wanted to do it in person. I’d tried to call Mark, but since I hadn’t answered or returned any of his calls over the past f
ew days, it seemed he now wouldn’t answer mine. I’d left him a voicemail instead.

  Chief Wilson’s cruiser wasn’t in the driveway when I pulled in. I dialed Fay’s cell phone to see if she wanted me to come in rather than making her answer the door, but her phone rang until it went to voicemail.

  I headed for the door and rang the bell. The neighborhood seemed quiet this time of day. A few birds chittering at each other in the trees and the drone of a leaf blower a block or two over were the only sounds.

  After two minutes, I tried the bell again.

  No answer.

  My heart accelerated. I dialed her cell a second time. It was possible she wasn’t home. I might be panicking over nothing.

  Inside the house, not too far from the door, came Fay’s distinctive ringtone, the one I’d teased her about sounding like amorous robots.

  It felt like someone stomped on my chest, sharp and heavy and painful. I tried the door handle. The door was unlocked.

  I pulled it open. “Fay?”

  My voice echoed back to me from the vaulted entryway. I inched the door open.

  The living room lay directly across from the entryway, and my mind seemed to only be able to process a single detail at a time.

  The bowl and bottle of some blue drink sitting on the coffee table. Fay’s cell phone on the floor. Fay’s hand hanging limp above it. Fay on the sofa.

  The world snapped back into real time and I dashed across the house, yelling her name. It must have been me yelling. There was no one else there, but it didn’t seem like it came from me.

  She still had a pulse, but I couldn’t tell if she was breathing. Surely she had to still be breathing. She didn’t seem to be breathing.

  I dialed 9-1-1, put the phone on speaker, and tore off my sling and started CPR. My injured shoulder felt like someone stabbed it with a thousand knives, but I refused to stop.

  Everything between then and climbing into my car to follow the ambulance to the hospital blurred together. I only remember stuffing Fay’s phone into her purse and taking it with me, thinking she might have an insurance card or some other information in her wallet that they’d need.

  I hit redial, redial, redial on Fay’s phone, trying to reach Chief Wilson, but he didn’t answer. What kind of a husband didn’t answer every call his sick wife made to him? Then again, I didn’t know if he was interviewing a suspect in a crime or out in the field. Rationally I knew I shouldn’t judge him so harshly, but he should be here for her, not me. I couldn’t make any decisions. The doctors wouldn’t even share her condition with me once we got there. I’d be stuck waiting without any sense of how she was. Stupid privacy laws.

  I followed the stretcher through the hospital doors and as far down the hall as they’d let me. When a nurse directed me to the waiting room, I just stood there. Because I couldn’t continue home now and I couldn’t sit here, either. If I sat here, it’d be admitting that Fay wasn’t going to make it. I had to do something in the hope that she was.

  I headed back the way I’d come, my purse over one shoulder and Fay’s over the other. I’d swing by the police station and see if Chief Wilson was there. Then I’d go by Fay’s house and put a bag together for her. When my friend Ahanti broke her leg skiing and had to stay in the hospital, she’d had me do that for her. Ahanti insisted that having a few of your own things, even fresh socks, could make a stay in the hospital bearable. Fay’s stay might be a long one, and I couldn’t stand the thought of her with cold feet or forced to wear the same socks for a week or more.

  The woman working the front desk at the police station told me Chief Wilson wasn’t in. I gave her my name.

  “He knows me. I’m a friend of his wife’s.” As well as a pain in his rear prior to this point, but friend of his wife was more likely to get me the results I wanted. “Fay was taken by ambulance to the hospital, and I can’t get ahold of him. I was hoping you could contact him.”

  The woman swore. “Yeah, I’ll call him on his radio right away.”

  Some of the weight that’d been dragging down on my shoulders since I found Fay eased. “Could you also let him know that I’m headed back to their house to pick up some of her things? I don’t want him worrying about any of that.”

  The woman nodded. She was already putting out the call.

  I jogged back to my car. My cell phone rang. I thought about ignoring it, but it might be Chief Wilson.

  I awkwardly fished it out while sliding into the driver’s seat and buckling in. “Hello?”

  “Nikki,” Russ said. “Please don’t hang up.”

  That’s exactly what I wanted to do. I should have checked my caller ID. I’d had quite enough of lies and betrayal, thank you very much. I didn’t need this now. “How are you even calling me?”

  “I’m out on bail. I didn’t kill Stan, and I didn’t try to hurt you. You have to believe me.”

  I switched the call to the speakers in my car and pulled out onto the road. “I don’t actually. Goodbye, Russ.”

  “Please. It’s important. I didn’t do this, and that means the real killer is still out there.”

  Yes, Virginia, and there is a Santa Claus. “I’m going to hang up now. I don’t have time for this. Fay is in the hospital.”

  Russ’s sharp intake of breath came through the phone as loudly as if he stood beside me. “Is she alright? What happened?”

  He sounded panicked. Honest to goodness, freaked out, I-misplaced-$100,000 panicked. My throat spasmed shut.

  Russ’ friend with the one bottle of Beaver’s Tail Beer. The beer that no local drank. And nowhere in Jason’s brewery did he have single bottles for sale. Only six packs. The one bottle in Fay’s fridge, leftovers from Chief Wilson’s tests. All of them the same type of beer.

  I might be about to make a huge fool of myself, but I didn’t think so. “Is Fay the women you were having an affair with?”

  The silence on his end spoke the truth louder than words. “How long?”

  “Six months. I was even the one going with her to most of her doctor’s appointments. Carl never had the time to take her.”

  The nicest way to describe Russ was homely, but setting aside the fact that he was currently under arrest for murdering my uncle, I could see what a woman whose husband seemed to care more about his job than about her would see in Russ. From the moment I’d met him, he’d shown a tendency to make choices that put others’ comfort above his own and to be there when you needed him.

  I turned into Fay’s driveway and leaned my head back against the headrest. Did I really believe that kind of a man would kill someone over a business, no matter how much he loved it? But if not him, then who? It felt like I was missing the all-important connection that would help this make sense.

  I disconnected the phone from the car and went into the house. “Did Chief Wilson know about the affair?”

  Russ gave a little humph, the equivalent of a verbal shrug. “Not that I know of. Fay could dye her hair purple and he probably wouldn’t notice.”

  I think Russ underestimated him. A man didn’t rise to Chief Wilson’s position in life, and spend that many years investigating crimes, without being observant. But if he had found out, that would give him motive to murder Russ or Fay, but not Uncle Stan.

  Holy crap! I stopped in my tracks halfway to the stairs.

  “Holy crap what?” Russ said.

  I hadn’t realized that’d been out loud. “Give me a minute. I’m thinking.” What if Fay was the intended victim and Uncle Stan figured it out? “How long before Uncle Stan died did he start looking into Fay’s heart condition?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. Maybe a couple of days.”

  “Okay, so stick with me on this because it’s going to sound crazy at first. If someone wanted to mimic heart problems to set up a murder, how would they do it?”

  A beat of silence. “I don’t know. But the whole issue with Jason Wood was over the caffeine in his beer and Stan thinking it could have hurt my heart.”

 
Caffeine. Of course. That’s why Uncle Stan had the book beside his bed open to caffeine’s interactions with the heart. In retrospect, I’d thought he’d probably been looking into it because of the situation with Jason and the beer, but that was over long enough ago that Uncle Stan should have put the book back on his shelf. He was meticulous about that. The only books he ever left out were the ones he was currently reading.

  After examining Fay, he must have guessed her heart condition wasn’t natural. He’d gone looking for the most likely cause. And Chief Wilson had to know it was only a matter of time before Stan started talking to Fay about environmental factors or someone trying to intentionally hurt her.

  “I think Chief Wilson was poisoning Fay and he killed Uncle Stan to keep him from figuring it out. I’m in their house now, so I’m going to take a quick peek and see if I can spot anything that might prove—”

  Something cold and round pressed against the back of my neck.

  Russ was still talking in my ear. “I don’t think that’s wise, Nikki. You need to call it in. Or if you don’t trust the police, call Mark.”

  His words only registered peripherally. A heavy hand on my shoulder turned me around slowly until I faced the gun. And the man holding it.

  21

  “Say goodbye,” Chief Wilson whispered.

  And for a crazy second I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to casually say goodbye to the person on the phone or if he was saying he was about to put a bullet into my brain like a TV mobster. But obviously he wasn’t going to shoot me with Russ on the phone as a witness. Not after what he’d heard me say.

  “And tell him you’ve decided to head home after all,” he whispered again. “This town isn’t safe.”

  It certainly wasn’t, I wanted to say. But my mouth complied. “I’ve got to go, Russ. You’re right. I’m supposed to be heading home anyway.”

  “Nikki, wa—”

  I disconnected the call.