Maple Syrup Mysteries Box Set 1: Books 1-3

Chief Wilson lowered the gun slightly, but kept it pointed at me. “Put the phone in your pocket and keep your hands in plain sight.”

  My brain slowly ticked over to an unnatural calm. I’d expected a fresh panic attack. Or maybe nausea. I could imagine myself barfing all over Chief Wilson’s shoes. But none of that happened. “I’m guessing you heard most of that conversation?”

  “The parts since you came into the house.”

  The crazy-calm part of my brain said to keep him talking because as long as he was talking, he wasn’t shooting. “Where’s your car?”

  “Parked a few streets away. I didn’t want anyone wondering why I was here after I got the call about my sick wife. And my dispatcher said you’d also be coming here. I couldn’t have you getting suspicious.”

  Obviously he hadn’t thought to use the excuse that he came here to pick up some personal items for her. Maybe that’s something only a woman would think to do. Or maybe that would have made the staff at the hospital suspicious, because wouldn’t a devoted husband want to stay as close to his wife as possible when her life was at risk? Or maybe he knew his dispatcher would question if he’d been here when she knew I was here.

  Regardless, there could be only one reason he came back here after receiving the news about Fay. “You were going to wait until I was gone and then get rid of the evidence.”

  “I know how quickly an investigation can progress if someone decided one was needed. I wasn’t taking a chance. And I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t.”

  I didn’t want to ask what he planned to do with me and bring his attention back to the fact that I’d become a liability. I needed to keep him talking until I could figure out how to escape. What I wouldn’t give for a steak knife right about now. “How did you find out? About the affair I mean.”

  He motioned with the gun that I should move toward the back door. “Storm over the summer knocked out our power. I couldn’t find my phone in the dark to call the power company and check in with the office. So I used Fay’s. And saw a text come in from Russ making sure she was alright, was I home, did she need him to come over.”

  Nothing explicit, but Chief Wilson wasn’t a stupid man, either. The planning he seemed to have put into all this proved as much. “I guess you followed her after that.”

  I was reaching for conversational straws, but nothing I passed as I edged slowly backward would work as a weapon or a means of escape. A couch pillow wasn’t going to stop a bullet. Throwing it at him also wasn’t likely to distract him long enough for me to escape. The man was a trained law enforcement officer.

  “Followed her and confirmed my suspicions. Twenty years we’ve been married and she chooses to prostitute herself out like I haven’t given her a better life than anyone else in this town has.”

  “Why not divorce her? It didn’t have to end up like this for anyone.”

  “I’m up for election as sheriff next year.” Chief Wilson cringed. “As soon as it came out that my wife left me for Russell Dantry, I’d be a laughingstock and no one in the county would vote for me. I’m not going to be stuck running the tiny municipal police department in this town until I die.”

  My dad always said that greed was a stronger motivator than love. I wanted to crack Chief Wilson in the nose for no other reason than adding proof to my father’s theory.

  We were almost to the door. Could I somehow pat my pocket in such a way that my phone would dial? Not likely. It’d been long enough that I’d have to put the passcode back in.

  He pointed to the left. “Not that way. Go left, into the garage.”

  That wasn’t good. He probably didn’t intend to shoot me after all. He was too smart for that. Too much noise. Too much chance of a neighbor hearing it and calling it in. But he could have any manner of things in the garage that would kill me quietly.

  I stopped. Time for a different tactic. “I can see why you’d be angry. You’ve given her everything she should want, right? A nice house. Security.”

  Chief Wilson laughed, and it sounded a bit like a lawnmower struggling to start. “That’s not going to work on me, Ms. Fitzhenry-Dawes.” He slurred my last name again. “I know the tricks of the trade.”

  No more subterfuge then. I wished I could cross my arms to give the impression of calm and strength, but my injured shoulder ached from the CPR I’d done on Fay. I wasn’t sure I could lift it even that far. “So what do you plan to do with me? People will wonder where I went.”

  “I doubt it. Haven’t you been telling the whole town goodbye? It’ll look like you headed home. And if you don’t make it, your family will assume something happened to you along the way.”

  Arg. He was probably right.

  Which meant I had no reason to go into that garage. I had no reason to do anything he said.

  If he wanted to kill me, I was going to make him do it the hard way. The hard, loud, attention-drawing, guilty-finger pointing way.

  22

  The lessons from my self-defense classes flooded into my brain in a jumbled mess. Panic scrabbled at my throat, making it hard to breathe. I was only supposed to have to defend myself and draw enough attention to attract help. Attacking first was never part of the training.

  But some things still applied. Chief Wilson was stronger and better trained. My only hope was to aim for a vulnerable spot and scratch like crazy to get his DNA under my fingernails. I might not survive this, but I was going to leave as much evidence for the police and prosecutor as possible.

  The most vulnerable spot on a man was his groin, and if any man deserved an elbow in the nuts, it was him.

  I let out a screech that I hoped would both throw him off and draw the attention of every neighbor on the block, ducked low, and launched myself toward his lower half.

  I missed my target and smashed good shoulder first into his stomach instead.

  The gun boomed somewhere above my head, and we hurtled backward. One of his limbs clipped me in the chin, sending hot darts through my face, and the warm copper tang of blood flooded my mouth. Black twirled across my vision.

  We tumbled into the side of the recliner. It tipped and crashed backward.

  As I went down, I caught a glimpse of the front door. It didn’t seem as far away as it had before. If he’d lost his grip on the gun in the fall, I might be able to make it. I scrambled forward on hands and knees.

  A hand clamped around my ankle and yanked me back. I flopped onto my belly like a land-bound fish. For a second, all I could think was that this was not a very graceful way to die, which, sadly enough, was fitting, since I’d never been very graceful in life.

  Chief Wilson planted a knee into the small of my back and wrapped a large hand around the side of my head. He crushed my face into the cold wood floor.

  “You can’t ever do what you’re told, can you?” His words came out in a snarl.

  “Not when what I’m being told is wrong.” It was difficult to speak with my face all flattened, but the extra hard squeeze he gave my head gave away that he’d understood me.

  “I didn’t want to have to hurt you.”

  The front door slammed back against the wall. “Let her go.”

  Russ!

  Even though Chief Wilson kept me firmly trapped, I recognized Russ’ voice. When I disconnected our call, he must have jumped into his truck and driven straight here.

  Chief Wilson’s weight on my back shifted slightly. “Go home, Russ. If you don’t, I’ll snap her neck and blame it on you. It’ll be your word against mine, and who do you think people will believe?”

  “I always knew you had an ego bigger than your heart,” Russ said. “I’m not leaving her here with you.”

  I had to assume Chief Wilson had lost his gun in our tussle. Otherwise he would have threatened to shoot me or to shoot Russ. If Russ could grab it, we might still make it out of here. “He dropped his gun—”

  The crushing weight vanished from my back. I rolled to the side in time to see Chief Wilson dive for the gun and Russ dive for Chie
f Wilson. They went down in a tangle of limbs.

  Russ might be strong from the physical labor involved with working the maple bush, but no way was he going to be a match for a police officer in hand-to-hand combat.

  I fished for my phone, but stopped before I reached it. Calling for help wouldn’t be fast enough. He could shoot us both before the 9-1-1 dispatcher even answered and blame it on Russ.

  I stumbled to my feet and grabbed a lamp from the end table. The shade toppled off, and a light tug signaled the cord popping from the wall. I sprinted toward the fight.

  I’d always been terrible at sports, baseball included, but Chief Wilson’s head made a much bigger target than a baseball. Even I couldn’t miss it.

  I swung the lamp and the base cracked him in the skull, above his ear.

  He dropped to his knees. Russ wrenched the gun from his grip and turned it on Chief Wilson.

  I skittered around the couch to stand beside Russ. Wilson rubbed the back of his head, a dazed look on his face.

  “I know I’m not your uncle and you’re a grown woman,” Russ said, “but I’m not asking this time. I’m telling you. Call the police.”

  I set down the lamp and did as I was told.

  For what seemed like hours, the police questioned Russ and me separately, then sent in an EMT to check me over and put my arm back in a sling.

  I couldn’t tell exactly how long it took or what time it was because my watch had broken during the fight, they took my cell phone, and apparently no one thought a clock was necessary in the room they tucked me in to. This must be some form of psychological trick to put pressure on suspects.

  Sometime after I started pacing the floor, a balding officer brought Russ in.

  The officer nodded at me. “Shouldn’t be long now, miss.”

  Russ sank heavily into the nearest chair. It creaked under his weight.

  I dragged another chair over beside him. “Do you think this means they’ve decided we’re telling the truth?”

  “I guess so.” He glanced at the door. “I passed the county sheriff and two of his deputies on the way here. They wouldn’t have brought in someone from the outside if they weren’t taking this seriously and considering charging Carl.”

  His voice had a hollow edge to it, and his shoulders slumped forward. I would have wondered why he didn’t look happier over being proven innocent if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew how he felt about Fay.

  “Would they tell you anything about Fay?”

  I knew he must have asked. I’d asked both the officers who questioned me. They either didn’t know anything or wouldn’t tell me. They hadn’t given me a reason for their refusal. I’d briefly considered requesting that they let me see Erik, but I didn’t want to put him in a bad position.

  “Quincey,”—Russ waved his hand toward the door, and I guessed he meant the officer who brought him to my room—“said it didn’t look good. They’ve had to put her on life support, and they’re running scans to see if there’s any brain activity.”

  An ache built in my stomach. It’d been one thing to know she might die because of a problem with her heart that was outside of anyone’s control, but it was something else completely to think about her hooked up to machines and dying because the man who should have loved and protected her hurt her instead.

  “She was with me because she was lonely.” Russ rocked back and forth in his chair, back and forth. “I was with her because I loved her. I should have listened to Stan when he told me to break it off. He told me sleeping with a married woman would bring trouble and pain. But she didn’t want to give Carl up, and I didn’t want to lose her. Even though I knew Stan was right and what I was doing was wrong.”

  Any response I could come up with felt callous. Callous, and then there was that old saying about people in glass houses. If I hadn’t wanted to keep my ex so badly, I would have noticed the signs that said he was married. But I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to face the truth. And then I couldn’t see it.

  It seemed to be a pattern with me, one that I wasn’t proud of. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you when you said you’d never hurt Uncle Stan. Maybe if I had—”

  He clamped his hand over mine. “This isn’t your fault. Don’t even go there.”

  He was right, but it didn’t feel that way. I’d assumed he was lying because I’d been lied to before. And it turned out blind disbelief wasn’t any better a way to live than blind belief had been. Maybe the best path was somewhere in the middle, where trust and cynicism met up to form common sense.

  “I’m sorry anyway.” I patted the top of our joined hands. “Thank you for coming to my rescue.”

  He smiled even though it had a sad edge to it. “I was doing what your uncle would’ve done if he were still here.”

  We sat for a few minutes in silence, sharing the grief that we couldn’t share in words. Words couldn’t bring back the people we’d lost, but I could put one thing right. “I was thinking that owning Sugarwood might be too much for me.”

  Russ’ gaze snapped to my face, and he frowned. “You’re not planning on selling the place? So many people depend on—”

  I held my palm out toward him in the universal sign for wait. “That it might be too much for me on my own. I was thinking of taking on a partner, and I was hoping you might be interested in the job.”

  23

  I stayed over in Fair Haven for Fay’s funeral. I hadn’t known her long, but I’d counted her a friend, and I wanted a chance to say a final goodbye.

  As the funeral broke up, Mark approached me, his shoulders hunched against the wind.

  He scrubbed a hand over his hair and looked past my face rather than meeting my gaze. “Russ said you were planning to leave right after the funeral, but do you have time for a quick walk with me first?”

  It was late enough in the day that I’d have to find a hotel somewhere halfway anyway, so a few more minutes wouldn’t matter. I motioned toward the sugar maple bush butting up against the cemetery. “Let’s get out of the wind at least.”

  A wide path marked by poles at five-foot intervals blocked a path out from the bush around it, cultivation in the midst of the wild. The path allowed us to walk side by side.

  “I owe you an apology,” Mark said.

  I rubbed my hands up my arms, trying to generate some extra warmth. “For what?”

  “I didn’t take your call the day Fay died. I feel like—”

  I waved my hand as if I could brush his apology away. “It wouldn’t have made a difference. It wasn’t until I was talking to Russ that I put things together. You couldn’t have known Carl Wilson would be in the house when I showed up. And besides, I hadn’t answered your calls for days either.”

  “Still.”

  The silence settled over us, broken only by the trees’ bare branches clattering together overhead and the crunch of decaying leaves underfoot.

  “Will this go to trial?” I asked.

  I had plenty of experience sitting in courtrooms, both observing and serving as junior counsel, but I’d never had to go as a witness. If Wilson—I couldn’t call him Chief anymore—decided to take his chances, I couldn’t see any way I’d be exempt from testifying.

  Mark shook his head. “He took a plea deal. He knew he’d never survive in the general population as a former police chief. In exchange for solitary, he admitted to everything.”

  I drew my first deep breath in what felt like a solid week. The near-winter air bit my lungs, but it also made me feel sharp and vibrant. I wanted to breathe it in this time rather than hiding from it the way I had when I first came to Fair Haven. Maybe I’d make a Michigan girl after all.

  “He told me why he did it.” I stopped, pulled off a mitt, and ran my fingers along the ropy ridges of the nearest sugar maple tree. My sugar maple tree. In a few months, Russ and the others would be collecting sap from them, and I’d be learning a new skill. “What I’m still curious about is how? You can tell me that right, since it’ll be public re
cord?”

  Mark stepped in close, looking down at me. His gaze dipped to my lips and my breath caught.

  He pulled a leaf fragment from my hair and stepped back. “Apparently he knew about Fay’s affair for a while, and he was waiting until he could find a good way to murder her without getting caught.”

  “And when Uncle Stan made a fuss about the caffeine content in Beaver’s Tail beer and how dangerous it could be to a healthy heart…” I was guessing, but it sounded reasonable.

  “Mmhmm,” Mark said. “He used the investigation into Jason Wood and Beaver’s Tail Brewery to get what he needed. He took an extra canister of the caffeine powder Jason uses in his beer, but never entered it into evidence, so there’d be no record of him buying caffeine powder. Then he bought his own six-packs of the beer itself in the name of testing it for the investigation. What he was actually trying to figure out was how high a dosage he needed to use in order to either cause or mimic heart problems. He didn’t want to leave an online trail by searching for the information that way.”

  The rest of how it happened all lined up like dominoes. Fay got sick, and her doctors couldn’t understand why her seemingly healthy heart was showings symptoms of distress. When Fay learned about Uncle Stan’s past career and he offered to help, Uncle Stan became a threat to Wilson’s plan.

  “Did he say how…” My throat closed and it took me a minute to take control again. “My Uncle Stan. How did it happen?”

  Mark’s hand reached toward me like he wanted to offer comfort, then dropped back to his side. We were in such an awkward no man’s land. He was married, and aside from the relationship I was beginning to explore with Erik, I refused to be the other woman. Hopefully, though, Mark and I could find a way to be friends without all the awkwardness.

  The wind blew his hair over his forehead, and he brushed it back. “Stan told Fay about his own heart, so Carl knew. He showed up at Stan’s house unexpectedly and forced him to overdose. The way Carl tells it, he said it was either that or he’d kill Russ as well.”