“You,” she said to me, “need to make an appointment.”
In her office, I sat down in a chair and waited while Denise scanned Bethany’s schedule on her computer. My thumb throbbed — could a splinter shard be stuck in there? To stop myself sucking it, I rammed my hands deep into my pockets. The amethyst and lepidolite were still in my right pocket. In my left, the gauze bag of crystals from my mother had spilled its contents so that I now had a bunch of new stones to play with. It was soothing to turn the crystals over and over, feeling their cool smoothness beneath my fingertips.
“I could squeeze you in for fifteen minutes next Friday at seven o’clock,” Denise said eventually.
“In the morning? Anything later? And preferably sooner?”
“It’s next Friday, or April.”
“I’ll take Friday,” I said, but I must have looked disappointed, because she gave me a small smile.
“What was it in connection with? I know most of what there is to know about the business. Perhaps I could assist you?”
“I’m helping with the investigation into Laini Carter’s death.”
“Oh? How?” She sounded doubtful.
“I’m trying to find out more about Laini. Can you tell me what she was like?”
Denise pulled a face that might have meant anything. “Beautiful.”
“Everyone says that.”
“I mean, not just pretty, but like a different species kind of beautiful. People would stare at her, like she’d put a magic spell on them. It was funny to watch.”
Denise didn’t sound amused, though. I got the sense that she hadn’t been one of those who’d been entranced. What must it have been like for her, working with two very attractive women, both of whom were probably about as old as she was, but who wore their age so much better?
“That’s why Bethany still had her do the tours even though there was more important stuff to do up here,” she said. “Because the visitors would lap up her every word and then go on to spend a fortune in the store.”
“I need petty cash,” a voice behind me growled.
Startled, I spun around. Jim was standing in the doorway, tugging on the jug-ears set low on the sides of his head. Though he spoke to her, his gaze was fixed on me.
When I was a little kid, maybe five or six years old, we’d played a game called Kingy, which scared me stupid whenever I was tagged as “king.” You had to turn your back on a line of kids standing about twenty yards away and yell out, “K-I-N-G spells king!” before spinning back around. While your back was turned, the other kids could sneak toward you — the first kid who got near enough to touch you, won — but as soon as you spun around to face them, they had to freeze on the spot. If you saw them move, they were out.
Then you had to do it again. Turn your back. “K-I-N-G spells king!” Spin around. And they’d be closer. And closer. I’d been terrified by the shuffling and sniggering behind me, the sense of threat creeping up on me. Dread grew, anticipating the moment I’d be grabbed, possibly engulfed by the whole gang. Even knowing what was surely going to happen didn’t prevent me screaming when a paw clamped down on my shoulder. It had always freaked me out.
I felt like that, now, with Jim. Every time I turned around, he was behind me, standing a little closer.
“For the milk. Three dollars and fifty cents,” Jim said, stepping up to the desk and handing Denise a crumpled receipt.
She grabbed a bunch of keys from her desk, unlocked a drawer and refunded Jim, tossing the crumpled receipt he handed her into her in-tray. Still he lingered, standing right next to where I sat. He smelled of smoke and sweat.
“Was there something else, Jim?” Denise asked.
I jumped as a bell trilled beside me. Jim fished an old kitchen timer out of his chest pocket, carefully reset it, and then melted away out of the office.
“When we’re doing a boil, he has to tend the fires under the evaporators constantly,” Denise explained. “They need a wheelbarrow of wood about every nine minutes so as to keep the temperature even, or the syrup could get grainy.”
“So, Jim, he’s a little …?” I let the question dangle.
“I thought you wanted to know about Laini.”
“Right, yeah, I do. She was the head of marketing here?”
“Uh-huh, and she’s also the VP.” Denise shook her head. “She was, I mean.”
“When did she join the company?”
“Two years ago, it must be. She and Bethany were friends from way back when, but they hadn’t been in contact for years. Then Bethany found her on Facebook. Well, everyone’s on Facebook, aren’t they?” As she spoke, Denise fiddled with her keys, rubbing each one before letting it slide down the ring to join the rest and moving onto the next. The movement of her fingers, with their long, turquoise nails, was hypnotic. “And Bethany just handed her the job on a silver platter — no interview required — even though Laini knew nothing at all about the business. She didn’t even like maple syrup, can you believe it? She told me that once. I mean, who doesn’t like maple syrup?”
“I love it. So … was she good at her job?”
“Yeah,” Denise said grudgingly.
“What will happen now, then?”
She shrugged. “No one’s indispensable.” A slight smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “And who knows? The next person appointed to that position might be even better.”
The phone on the desk buzzed then.
“Uh-huh, sure. I’ve got it,” she told whoever was on the other end of the line. Dropping the keys on her desk, she rifled through a stack of papers, extracted one and stood up. “Bethany needs me.”
“She sounds like she’d be lost without you,” I said, ingratiatingly.
She nodded. “Sit tight, I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
As soon as she was out of the door, I snatched the bunch of keys and held them between both hands, pushing my mind into their curves and crenellated edges. My body tightened, as though all my nerve ends were waking up and gathering into a single focal point of attention. Light flickered behind my eyes.
Here we go.
– 16 –
Behind my closed eyes, images shimmered into existence.
Two women — one with a glossy fall of black hair, the other with short, mousy-brown curls — sit opposite each other at a long table. In a boardroom.
Laini’s face is drawn tight with concern. Denise’s is flushed a dull red.
“How long has this being going on?” Laini asks. Her voice is low, controlled.
“It’s nothing. I told you I just borrowed it until the end of the month.”
“Denise, I suspect this” — Laini taps a spreadsheet lying on the table between them — “is the least of it.”
“Prove it!”
“I don’t need to prove it. I’ll leave that to the experts. I just need to tell Bethany.”
“She won’t believe you. You think you’re so special because you’re pretty, because of your past? Lipstick and sequins!” she sneers. “Well, you’re not special. I’ve been here since this business started. She trusts me. She needs me!” she hisses, sending a drop of spittle onto the polished surface of the table.
“I really think it’ll be best if you tell her yourself. Come clean. She’ll let you go quietly — she won’t want any negative publicity.”
Denise’s hands bunch into fists. For a moment it looks like she’ll hit Laini. But then her face crumples, and her head sags onto her hands.
“I can’t lose my job. I can’t. Please, Laini, please. My son …”
“You tell her, or I will.”
“What are you doing?” a loud voice intruded.
The keys were snatched out of my hands, and I blinked my eyes open to see Denise staring down at me in deep suspicion.
“Sorry, I– I …” I couldn’t think of a plausible excuse. I just looked at her, open-mouthed.
“What are you staring at?” she demanded.
A thief, I think.
“Knock yourself out,” she said, stashing the bunch of keys in her desk drawer. “But don’t annoy Jim.”
As I left, my gaze was drawn to a collage frame of family snaps. One photograph caught my attention.
“Is this your son?” I asked Denise.
Her face softened. “Yeah, that’s Christopher, my baby boy.”
The kid in the picture — seventeen if he was a day — was laughing. He sat strapped in a wheelchair, elbows pulled tight against his body, wrists bent downwards, spasmed hands contracted all the way back against his forearms.
I glanced back at Denise, but she said nothing, and I left.
Downstairs, outside the office building, I headed straight for the sugar shack and slipped inside, keeping a sharp lookout for Jim. Enveloped in billowing clouds of fragrant steam, I looked around. Maybe, judging by the vintage exterior, I’d been expecting peachy-cheeked lasses in gingham dresses stirring copper pots over open log fires, because the sleek array of hi-tech equipment came as a surprise. There were huge stainless steel tanks filled with clear sap, tall machines labeled “Reverse Osmosis” and “Filter,” a huge open pan bubbling over an iron boiler with closed doors — that must be where Jim shoveled in the wood — and multiple closed vats with pipes running to a room on the right-hand side of the building. Through the glass partition, I could see bottles on a production line being filled with amber liquid, sealed with lids, and wrapped with labels before being stacked in boxes by two workers.
A voice behind me asked, “Can I help you?”
A woman wearing a white coat and a protective net over her hair was smiling at me expectantly.
“No, thanks. I’m just waiting for Bethany and Denise,” I said, trying to sound like I was inside the shack on official business. “They said they’d only be a minute or two.”
“Okay, then. Please don’t touch anything.”
I forced a laugh. “I wouldn’t dare! I know how Jim hates that.”
She nodded, checked a reading on the boiler, made a notation on her clipboard and walked to the bottling room. Knowing that Jim would be back at any minute to feed the fires, I crept past the boilers, heading deeper into the factory. There wasn’t much more to see, though, and the sweet smell of boiling syrup was beginning to make me feel sick. I was about to turn back when I spied a room in the far corner of the building. “Custodian’s Office”, read the sign on the closed door. When I got no answer to my knock, I checked that no one was watching and went inside.
If a person’s working space is any reflection of the inside of their head, then Jim was one crazy, mixed-up fellow. The room — more workshop than office — was a mess. Tools, pipes and the assorted innards of machines lay scattered on workbenches and the floor. A pinup calendar hung lopsidedly on one wall. Above the dates circled in thick red marker and the indecipherable notes scribbled in its margins, Miss March — a lissome redhead with breasts as large as cantaloupes — gazed out at the mess. Against the far wall, a filing cabinet with papers spilling out of its open drawers stood alongside a tall steel locker which had coils of blue tubing stacked on top.
With no clear idea of what I was looking for, I snooped around — touching a wrench and the calendar, riffling through the paperwork, poking through drawers. One of these was stocked with breath mints, gum, a comb, a nail grooming kit, a tube of industrial-strength hand cleaner and two cans of spray deodorant. Did Jim spruce himself up for a special lady before he left work at the end of the day?
I had just opened the tall locker and was staring at the coats and overalls hung on the rail inside when I heard the trilling of Jim’s alarm from nearby. A quick glance around the office confirmed that the only possible hiding place was inside the locker, so I climbed in, pulling the door closed behind me. It was hard to keep from falling back out because the uneven contents of the base of the locker, which I figured to be boots, made my balance precarious. The door wouldn’t shut all the way, but that was probably a good thing because it was suffocating inside, with a funky odor that made me switch to mouth-breathing.
As quietly as I could, I slid some of the hangers aside to make room for my face between the coats. Then I froze. Someone had come into the office. Low mutters and metallic clanging followed. My fingers, gripping the sharp inside rim of the door, started to cramp. Something soft and silky brushed against my cheek, but I didn’t dare brush it away for fear of making a sound. Every time I moved my face, even a fraction, it tickled my cheek or lips. I could only hope it was a spider’s web, and not the critter itself.
One final loud clank and then silence. Had he left? I forced myself to count to thirty before opening the locker door another inch and peering out. The room was empty, the door ajar. Time to get the heck out of here.
I stepped out and, wanting to arrange the hanging coats back in their original positions, turned back around. Then I gasped and shuddered as though a bucket of icy water had been hurled in my face. The back of this closet was strange and unusual, but it sure as maple sugar was not a magical doorway to Narnia.
And what had been tickling my face was no spider’s web.
– 17 –
When I drove into town late Friday morning, I was still feeling disturbed about what I’d seen in Jim’s locker the previous day. I needed to tell Ryan Jackson all about the creepy contents, but I reckoned it could wait until that afternoon. Ryan had called first thing in the morning to ask if he could come around at three o’clock “in an official capacity.” Would he be interested in hearing about my vision of Denise and Laini, I wondered, or like Officer Capshaw, would he just want the facts?
Before meeting Jessica for lunch, I swung by Hugo’s Hardware. I’d heard more noises coming from the Andersens’ ceiling, and I wanted to buy a couple of mousetraps to stick up in the attic. Hugo welcomed me into his cluttered store like an old friend and chuckled when I admired his sweatshirt. It was black and emblazoned with a white skeleton riding a Harley Davidson above a motto that read Sons of Arthritis — Ibuprofen Chapter.
“Christmas present from my grandchildren,” he said.
I noticed that his breath had lost none of its pungency since the last time I visited; Hugo was a fan of raw garlic sandwiches.
He snapped his suspenders and asked, “What can I do for ya today?”
“I need to buy some mousetraps.”
“Hmmm.” He tugged on his long white beard and crinkled his brow at me. “Now I stock dog food, birdseed, things in cardboard boxes, all the sorts of things rats like to eat. Though they also eat drywall and plastic cables, did ya know that?”
I considered. “Maybe?”
“But do you see me setting any mousetraps around my store?”
“I’m guessing that’s a no.”
“Right ya are,” he said, pointing a gnarled finger at me. “Know why that is?”
“Because you don’t have mice?”
“You betcha. Want to know the reason I don’t have mice?”
“Mousetraps?”
“Poison!”
Blue eyes twinkling with excitement, he limped over to a high shelf lethally stocked with packets of rat poison, boxes of slug bait, bottles of weed killer and an old rusted can that, ominously, didn’t specify its contents.
“Now, these blue blocks will do the trick very nicely. Turns their blood to water, and makes them thirsty to boot, so they go outside and die there, and you won’t have any rotting rat corpses stinking up your attic,” Hugo said with grim satisfaction.
“Yeah, but it poisons owls and any other wildlife who eat them out there,” I said.
“Mother Nature is tough that way.”
Ignoring the illogic of this, I said, “I think I’d prefer traps.”
He squinted at me. “Are ya sure it’s mice up there? Did ya see them scampering about?”
“No, but I’ve heard them.”
“Could be yo
u’ve got yourself a squirrel infestation, or some bats in your belfry.” He guffawed.
“You could be right about that, Hugo.” More right than he knew. “How would I know whether it’s mice or rats?”
“Ah, now, that can be tricky, telling the difference. You’ll want to go up there and check for droppings.”
“Urgh.”
“Mice droppings are tiny and will be scattered all over the area. Squirrel droppings are bigger and smell the worst. Rat droppings, now, they have pointed ends and are darker. Your average rat will leave 25,000 droppings in a year, did ya know that?”
“I do now, and kinda wish I didn’t.”
“You’ll be wanting one of these for when you do a site inspection,” Hugo said, handing me a protective face mask. “You don’t want to be catching the plague from inhaling dust from their droppings.”
“Don’t you sell mousetraps?”
“Of course I sell ‘em,” he said, looking at me like I was crazy to ask. “Right this way.”
He led me past shelves stacked with power tools, pool chemicals and fishing tackle, asking over his shoulder, “So, you’re back in town, then?”
“For a while.”
“Taking care of the Andersens’ place while they’re gone, I hear?” Hugo heard everything. He was the heart of the town’s grapevine. “Over at that big golf estate outside of town. Golf! Men with sticks chasing a little ball around.” Hugo tutted and shook his head at this folly. “Well, that’s not all that happens there. I could tell you a thing or two about those people. I know things.”
“You sure do know a lot, Hugo. Do you maybe know what happens in Fight Club?”
“Eh?”
“Never mind. Where should we look next — for the mousetraps?”
“Hold your horses,” he chided me. Lifting a storage box off a shelf, he blew dust off its lid and peered inside. Then he shook his head. “Nope, not in here.”
I suspected the old devil knew exactly where they were but wanted to prolong our chat.
The First Time I Fell Page 10