Maple Syrup Mysteries Box Set 1: Books 1-3

by Emily James

  It was the kind of smile that forced you to smile in return, regardless of what else was going on around you. “Chief Higgins, is that a grin I see?”

  The smile grew. “You’re something else, Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes. Has anyone ever told you that before?”

  Often, but never in a good way. The old insecurities inside me tried to pounce, but the warmth from his smile drove them back. Why couldn’t I have fallen for this man instead? We could have been happy. Emotions were funny, irrational things.

  Erik leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “So let’s hear this theory of yours and then I’ll decide whether pod people are a better lead.”

  “We know Craig was falsifying the paperwork to say he was euthanizing dogs when he was actually giving them to the man I met. I think Paul might have caught on to it and also realized there was an unusually high number of large dogs going missing. From what you’ve told me, he was the kind of man who would have been worried about the welfare of the animals and might have started investigating himself.”

  “Do you have a guess about what Paul thought was going on?”

  “A dogfighting ring.” I closed both eyes as I said it, but then peeked one open to watch Erik’s reaction because I couldn’t help myself.

  Erik rested a hand on top of his head like he’d planned to rub his scalp and forgot. “I’d buy it. After I stepped in to fill Chief Wilson’s shoes, I saw how much he’d been covering up in an attempt to look good for his bid for sheriff. But how does the puppy fit into it?”

  “I think she was part of Paul’s evidence of whatever he found. That’s the only thing that makes sense for why the man who came by here would be so desperate to get her back.”

  Erik’s eyebrows lowered like he was mulling over what I’d said.

  My defense attorney training was already pointing out all the holes in my theory inside my head. “And I know we technically have nothing right now to directly link her to anything. My guess is that whoever killed Paul took the rest of his evidence.”

  “Then why not take the puppy at the same time?”

  I got up and walked the two steps it took to go back and forth across the office, then went back the other direction. Movement always helped me work through problems.

  Nothing came to me. They killed Paul and left the puppy. That was where my theory fell apart.

  19

  Since the police still had the shelter closed down the next day, and since I hadn’t had a day off since I got to Fair Haven, I decided I needed a self-care day. I spent the morning in my pajamas, eating the last of the goodies Bonnie sent home with me and reading one of the mystery novels off Uncle Stan’s shelves that I hadn’t read before.

  That’s how I planned it, anyway. What it actually turned out looking like was I’d read a couple of pages while standing up, then have to chase down my puppy to find out what object she’d woodchucked. At a particularly interesting part of the book, I lost the heel off one of my shoes, and the banister leading upstairs would need a new coat of varnish to cover up the teeth marks. I swear she thought it was a game called How much can I destroy before Nicole catches me?

  I made a mental note to find out how long puppies teethed for. My belongings might not survive if it turned out to be more than a week or two. Was this what having children was like?

  Bonnie’s maple syrup cookies and maple fudge, though, were good enough that I could see selling little gift boxes of them at the pancake house and at the rental shop. If I called up and asked for her recipes, the worst she could say was no.

  “I’ll do better than that,” Bonnie said when I posed my request. “I’ll teach you how to make them. Half the recipe’s in the technique. You’re welcome to come over tonight if you’re not too tired from work.”

  That’s right. She didn’t know I wasn’t a full-time shelter employee.

  “The shelter’s closed today.” Which still didn’t explain why I didn’t need to tend the animals at all today. The break-in wouldn’t be public yet, but Craig’s murder would have been on the news by now, even if they hadn’t released his name. “The shelter’s vet tech was murdered.”

  Bonnie gasped. “I hadn’t heard. I’m so glad it wasn’t you.”

  “So am I.” Especially given how close I came last night to it being me.

  We agreed I’d be at her house in an hour, giving me time to shower and dress and clear anything the puppy could destroy out of the laundry room so I had somewhere to lock her up while I was gone. I’d need to add an extra-large crate to my list of essentials for her.

  When Bonnie answered her door, she looked around me as if expecting someone else. “No Mark today?”

  Bonnie was nice enough, but I didn’t want to discuss my love life—or lack thereof—with her. Given that she’d learned about Paul’s murder before it hit the papers, I had a feeling the woman was at the hub of the gossip mill.

  “He had to work,” I said.

  It wasn’t a lie. Surely he did need to work today.

  Bonnie pinned my arms against my sides and hugged me so tightly in her exuberance that it was going to take the rest of the day for my personal space bubble to bounce back. “Well, I’m glad you could come even if Mark couldn’t join in our fun.”

  She let me go, linked her arm through mine, and led me into the house. I had to kick off my shoes while walking.

  “Any sign of Toby?” Bonnie asked.

  Based on how long Toby had been missing, I doubted he’d turn up, but I didn’t want to take her hope away. “I’m afraid not, but that might change once we have our Facebook page set up. If he lost his collar, someone might have kept him, thinking he was a stray.”

  “You’re right.” She patted my arm. “It’s just lonely without him. The only family I have left is my nephew out in California, and I only get to see him when he flies me out for Thanksgiving.”

  She chuckled, but it sounded like a cardboard cutout of what laughter should be.

  Being alone as you aged couldn’t be easy. I could see myself ending up in her place thirty or forty years down the road, except I wouldn’t even have a nephew to spend Thanksgiving with.

  I squeezed her arm closer to my side. “Maybe next time you can give me a cooking lesson at my house. I’ll buy all the ingredients. I bet you’re as good a cook as you are a baker.”

  Her face glowed. “I do have some secret family recipes that I think it’d be alright to share with you.”

  Her smile clogged my throat with a lump I couldn’t swallow.

  “Now, I’ll get the ingredients and bowls and such out if you’ll reach down that little green box for me”—Bonnie pointed to the top of her refrigerator—“and find us the recipes. I know ’em by heart, but I want you to be able to see the words on paper. It makes learning easier.”

  The top of the refrigerator seemed like an odd place to store her recipes, but then everyone had their quirks. Problem was, Bonnie had a few inches of height on me. Even on my tiptoes, I couldn’t curl my fingers around the box. “Do you have a stepstool I could use?”

  Bonnie turned from the cupboard she’d been facing, her arms piled so high with bowls and pots and measuring cups that her face barely showed over the top. “You could grab a footstool from the living room if you need it.”

  I dragged it in bum-first because it was too heavy to lift. After I got the recipe box down, I left the footstool next to the fridge in case Bonnie wanted me to put the box back.

  I snapped the top open on the recipe box and found the maple syrup cookie recipe near the front. I kept flipping through, looking for the maple fudge recipe as well.

  I was almost to the back when I reached a card that didn’t have a recipe written on it at all. It listed a website address and what looked like Bonnie’s login information. The next cards were the same.

  It was smart of her. If anyone wanted to steal her login information, they wouldn’t think to look in a recipe box. But finding it made me feel a bit like I was rummaging around in her und
erwear drawer.

  I flipped back to the front to resume my hunt for the maple fudge recipe since I must have missed it the first time through.

  My hand stilled on the front card. When the police searched the shelter, they hadn’t found anything that looked like evidence Paul had collected or anything to identify my puppy as evidence of wrongdoing. Yesterday Erik and I assumed that meant there was no such evidence and my theory was wrong, but what if Paul hid the evidence because he was afraid someone might come after him? It’s what I would do.

  I set the cookie recipe on the counter next to Bonnie and handed her the recipe box. “I can’t seem to find the fudge recipe. Would you mind? That’ll also give me a chance to check in and see when the police might be done with the shelter.”

  Bonnie bobbed her head and waved me off with a flourish. As I left the room, I could hear her humming a tune.

  I called Erik.

  “Have you released the scene yet?” I asked when he answered.

  “Any time now. And I have some good news. The techs found the bullet lodged in a tree across the street. They’ll be able to test it to see if it matches the one we pulled from Craig.”

  Craig’s lifeless face flashed across my mind, and creepy-crawlies skittered over my skin. I’d started seeing a counselor back in DC after my ex’s betrayal. It might be wise for me to find one here, too, considering all the things I’d seen.

  I licked my dry lips. “Can you hold the scene a little longer?”

  “Why?” His voice took on a wary tone. Like he knew I was about to stir up more trouble for him.

  “I have a hunch that Paul did find evidence but hid it. I know you can’t search his apartment again, so I’m hoping it’ll be at the shelter since that’s officially a crime scene again.”

  Erik sighed, but it sounded more like Okay, I’ll bite than Why are you wasting my time again? “Even if that were true, the techs were thorough. If we didn’t find his hiding place before, how are we supposed to find it now?”

  Bonnie’s hiding spot for her passwords was one I’d never have thought of. My best friend Ahanti hid her passport in a plastic baggie on the back of a clock. Hiding spots might be as individual as preferred nail polish colors. Which meant the only one who might know a person’s hiding spots would be someone very close to them.

  “Melissa might have an idea. If you’d be willing to call her.” I used my best pretty please voice.

  “It might not help.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  My cell phone rang as Bonnie and I were finishing up our snack of coffee and fresh maple cookies before tackling the fudge.

  Erik skipped the greeting entirely. “You’re going to want to see what we found.”

  I slid a hand over my cell phone. “Would it be alright if we saved the fudge for another day? I’m needed at the shelter.”

  “Of course!” Bonnie scooped up our plates and slid more cookies into the washed container I’d returned to her. “For when you get hungry,” she whispered.

  The woman was going to have me in a moo-moo soon if I wasn’t careful.

  I kept Erik on the phone as I set out in my car. “Where did you find it?”

  “Stuffed into the half inch gap under a filing cabinet. Melissa said Paul used to leave messages for her tucked under her filing cabinet when he didn’t want anyone else to find them. So I had the team start turning over anything heavy enough that most people wouldn’t mess with it.”

  I almost didn’t want to ask the next question. “What was it? That you found.”

  “A CD.”

  The thick tone to Erik’s voice spoke volumes about how I’d feel when I saw whatever images were on it. A black hole formed in my stomach.

  I may have broken a few speed limits on the way to the shelter. Imagining the worst had always been my failing. Once I knew the truth, I could start coping with it.

  Erik met me at the shelter door and took me back to the office. He closed the door behind us.

  “Take a seat,” he said.

  It was almost clichéd. I felt like the woman who was asked Are you sitting down? before someone gave her life-shattering news.

  I sank into the chair anyway.

  Erik crouched beside me and slid the mouse away. “I’m only going to show you a short section. You don’t need to see it all.”

  The black hole in the depths of my stomach grew.

  He clicked play and the fuzzy still frame on the screen turned into a clearer video. Based on how wobbly the camera shot was, my guess was it’d been taken on a phone. The light was poor, like it’d been shot at night, and at first, the only thing on the screen were the bare, snow-covered branches of a scrubby bush, backlit from light somewhere out of the shot.

  Then the angle panned up.

  Metal barrels lined the edges of a clearing within the trees. Reflections from the flames carved sharp lines along the snow and cast flares on the phone’s screen. A heavy-duty wood and metal snow fence created a ring in the center.

  I glanced at Erik. So far the images weren’t exactly disturbing or condemning. Something about them even looked vaguely familiar. Probably because I’d been spending so much time out in the sugar bush lately.

  I turned my attention back to the screen in time to see the perspective shift again, away from the ring. A navy blue van came into focus. It looked like the same one I’d seen when I caught Craig giving away the aggressive dog.

  Cages full of dogs hunched on the ground next to it.

  One of them was my puppy. My brain couldn’t parse the images I saw next, but I knew now why she’d reacted to the man the way she had. His training methods were brutal.

  I looked away.

  Erik pressed stop. “Paul kept recording as the spectators arrived and placed their bets and through some of the fights. The recording ends suddenly like he ran out of space or his battery died, but he caught enough to bring charges against a lot of people. My guess is he also stole the Dane puppy either because he couldn’t stand to leave her there or he thought she’d serve as additional evidence. We might never know his full reasoning.”

  Whatever his motivation had been, I was grateful to him for rescuing her rather than leaving her behind. “Great Danes aren’t usually used in dogfighting, are they?”

  “They’re not, but based on what I saw on the rest of the recording, whoever’s running this ring is trying to make his fights different.” He cringed on the last word.

  I didn’t envy him or any other police officer the horrible things they had to see on a regular basis. They were heroes for how they shielded citizens, sometimes in ways we didn’t even know about.

  I pushed the chair back away from the desk until I ran into the filing cabinets just to put space between me and what I’d seen on the screen. “For the sake of the dogs, I was hoping my guess was wrong.”

  “At least now we know why Paul was killed.” Erik ejected the disk from the computer and snapped it back into its case. “I’ll have to send this away since we don’t have facial recognition software here, but we should eventually be able to identify some of the participants and spectators.”

  “How long will it take to get some answers?”

  Erik pursed his lips. “Depends on how backed up they are, but I’d be surprised if we had names in less than a week or two.”

  Somehow that felt like a loss rather than a success and that we’d created as many questions as we’d answered. Any of those people could have seen Paul and followed him back here to kill him because they didn’t want to be identified, including the man who’d come looking for my puppy. And while the police tried to track them all down, the dogfighting would continue.

  A niggling sensation, like a word on the tip of my tongue that wouldn’t come, pressed at me. The problem was, I didn’t even know what I wanted to describe with the word. All I knew was I couldn’t let it rest at this.

  “There has to be some way to stop the dogfighting ring now rather th
an months from now, after more dogs have been tortured and killed.”

  Erik slid the disk into a brown evidence envelop. “The recording could have been made anywhere. Without more to go on, our best chance is to wait for the facial recognition software to provide us with some hits. I don’t like it any more than you do.”

  The recordings couldn’t have been made anywhere. They had to be nearby since they were sourcing animals from Fair Haven, both stolen and through Craig. “You said the fights are different. Why? How? Maybe the anomalies will help us narrow the options down.”

  Erik’s forehead crinkled. “I’m not going into how. That’s something you don’t need to know, and once you did, you’d want to take it back.”

  He was probably right. I already knew a lot of things I wished I didn’t. “Let’s stick with why then. Why would he make his fights different?”

  Erik’s look clearly said how am I supposed to know?

  I curled my fists into balls in my lap to keep from bopping the top of the desk in frustration. It was so petty to miss Mark at a time like this, but he would have spit-balled ideas with me like we had during the investigation of Uncle Stan’s murder when we’d visited Beaver’s Tail Brewery.

  I flattened my palms into my thighs. Maybe that was it. Jason Wood, owner of the brewery, made his awful beers different to attract tourists. The organizer of the dogfighting ring might be doing the same. “What do you think?”

  “What do I think? I already said I don’t know why he’d make his fights different. Seems like the people who want to watch fights wouldn’t care whether they were unique or not.”

  “No, not about that.”

  “You’re not making sense, Nicole. You asked me why they’d make the fights different. I said I didn’t know, then you asked me again.”

  Heat blistered my face. If I wasn’t careful, he’d send me home, thinking I was overwrought again. I wasn’t. This time I was in complete control. Anger over what these people were doing had burned out all the other emotions. “I guess I forgot to share my idea out loud.”

  I went over it again, verbally this time.