Maple Syrup Mysteries Box Set 1: Books 1-3

by Emily James

  “Are you here about a problem with your car?” There was a brittleness to Tony’s voice that was unnatural. I’d never heard him anything other than soft-spoken. “Otherwise, we’re busy today and I need all my employees working.”

  I stuffed the photo back in my purse, not worrying about whether I bent it or not and suddenly grateful that I’d chosen one of the more innocent pictures. For a second I considered fibbing and saying that Oliver was helping me book an oil change for my car. Given that Tony had seen me showing Oliver the photo, though, that would only draw even more attention to it.

  “I’m sorry.” I swung my purse over my shoulder. “That was thoughtless of me. I’ll let you both get back to work.”

  I hurried to my car, got in, and sucked in a huge breath. My lungs felt like I’d forgotten to breathe for a full minute. Tony’s reaction wasn’t good. At all. He’d been upset by the picture of Noah and the girl-woman, and that suggested she meant something to him. A daughter, maybe, or a niece. She’d be the right age for either.

  And whoever the girl-woman was, Tony wasn’t over whatever happened between her and Noah. If she was the same girl whose father had brought statutory rape charges against Noah, then I knew, based on the photos, that both Noah and the girl had lied.

  The question was, would Tony or someone else close to him have acted to punish Noah after all these years?

  11

  My brain wanted to panic and jump to all sorts of conclusions. Like that Tony had finally snapped and attacked Noah. Like that I was once again going to have to decide between hiding the truth and letting a good but guilty person walk free.

  In this case, if Noah had been inappropriate with a girl Tony cared about, I couldn’t even blame him. Had it been my daughter, and the legal system wasn’t able to take action against him, I might have taken matters into my own hands, too, rather than allow him to walk free and do the same thing to other girls.

  Then again, in this town, the quickest path to destroying anyone seemed to be through the rumor mill. Tony could have—no, he couldn’t. He couldn’t say anything about what Noah had done publicly without also bringing the kind of attention he probably didn’t want onto the girl.

  I told my brain to knock it off and started my car. I didn’t even know for sure that the girl was related to Tony. Figuring out her name was the first thing I needed to do. Once I identified her, I’d hand this over to Elise.

  Maybe it was the coward’s way out, but then it’d be her call, not mine, as to what to do about it next.

  I turned onto the street, but drove well below the speed limit. I should return to Sugarwood, but if I did, it could be days before I could follow up on this lead. And now Tony knew I was looking. If he’d had something to do with Noah’s attack, who knew what that might drive him to do.

  Something Oliver said earlier came back to me. Noah had supposedly been fired from Quantum Mechanics for stealing, but what could he have stolen, really? I doubted there was a black market around here for wrenches and steering shafts. As far as I saw, they only accepted payment by credit card, so Noah couldn’t have been skimming cash.

  What if the “fired for stealing” story was a cover? Noah might have been fired because of the situation with the girl in the photo.

  If I had the time, I could go to the Fair Haven library and look through the high school yearbooks and church photo directories.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. I put on my four-ways and parked at the edge of the road.

  Inspector here to look at the sap lines, the text from Russ said. Need you back at Sugarwood ASAP.

  Figuring out who the girl in the photo was would have to wait.

  “How can there be nothing structurally wrong with our lines?” I asked as Russ and I stood out front of the sugar shack, watching the inspector from the sap line manufacturer pull away. “Are you sure he’s not just saying that so they don’t have to take on the cost of replacing all our lines?”

  Russ’ hair already stuck out in three directions, but he ran his fingers through it again. With all that had been going wrong at the farm so far, I had a suspicion he hadn’t showered in a few days. “I watched him run all the tests, and he showed me samples he brought from the factory. There’s no difference.”

  If I hadn’t figured out a couple of hours ago that Tony had something to do with the girl in Noah’s photo, I might have wondered if my day could get any worse. In retrospect, the blow of the mysteriously faulty sap lines lessened slightly in comparison. “So what do we do?”

  “He suggested trapping and relocating squirrels who might be gnawing on the lines.”

  Oh dear Lord. Now I’d heard it all. “He wants us to set up little live traps in our bush to catch squirrels. There have to be hundreds of squirrels out there. It’s a bush, not a city garden.”

  I didn’t even try to squelch the hysterical note to my voice. I needed to release some of my pent-up worry and frustration, and it might as well be over the fact that our best hope for salvaging our sugar season basically told us we had a squirrel infestation.

  It almost made me wish I was a drinker…which actually was probably why Uncle Stan had put the fear of God into me when I was a teenager about drinking at all. Given that I was already a chronic overeater when stressed, I’d have been an alcoholic by now if he hadn’t.

  “Trapping and releasing the squirrels isn’t practical,” Russ said, as if he thought I might be seriously considering it. “I’m not even sure I’m convinced that’s the cause. I’ve worked here my whole adult life. I don’t see why we’d have more squirrels this year than any other, or why they’d take an extra-special interest in our sap lines.”

  So we didn’t know what was damaging our lines, which meant we also didn’t know how to stop it, and we’d continue hemorrhaging sap until we did. I had to ask the obvious question. “What does this mean for our production this year?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Russ.” I infused my voice with the warning tone I’d heard my mother use whenever I’d stepped across her quilt-pattern of lines.

  Russ bobbed his head. “Right. Partner.”

  We were making progress there, at least.

  “We’ll have to run the numbers.” His finger moved through the air as though he were already running sums in his head. “We have a cushion that can see us through one bad year, but it’s going to be tight if we also continue to lose tours with Noah gone.”

  Russ and I had talked about me paying off Noah’s debt to Georgiana Abbott, and with the shakiness of the current season, he’d advised me against it. Not only did he think, based on what I’d told him, that Georgiana hadn’t hurt Noah, but he didn’t want to see me in financial trouble if Noah passed on.

  I’d felt like an awful human being for following his advice, but now it seemed he’d been right. We might need my savings to keep Sugarwood running.

  In the meantime, we needed to do some damage control. “I can start leading the tours myself. I know quite a bit about syrup production now, and Noah taught me how to tack up the horses and drive the sleigh.”

  “You’re the best choice for it,” Russ said.

  I decided not to ask whether it was because I was the best with the horses or I was the least experienced with the hands-on production and therefore was the one who could best be spared. “I’ll talk to Tom McClanahan as well. Uncle Stan left me some money that I should have access to assuming the estate is fully settled now.”

  The first opening Tom McClanahan had in his schedule was three days later.

  I showed up at his office five minutes before my scheduled appointment time.

  Ashley glanced up from her computer screen, her face looking like she’d recently had another Botox treatment. As usual, her clothes were borderline not suitable for work with the amount of cleavage they showed.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a tone that implied my very existence was wasting her time.

  In a way, it was a shame I didn’t have Mark
with me. Ashley at least attempted to be pleasant when he was around.

  “I have a three o’clock appointment with Tom.”

  “Mmmm.” Ashley tapped her keyboard and the gold bangles on her wrist clinked together. “No, you don’t, and he’s fully booked today. You’ll have to actually make an appointment and come back then.”

  Ashley had been the one who answered the phone when I called and who booked my appointment. She knew full well that I’d booked an appointment today. The fact that I wasn’t actually on the schedule had to be intentional.

  If you react, she wins, my mother’s voice said in my head.

  The bell above the door jingled, probably signaling the arrival of the people Ashley had given my appointment slot to. Tom always came out of his office to greet his appointments himself and usher them in. I could circumvent Ashley’s nasty trick despite her best efforts.

  I blasted Ashley with my best smile, one that I hoped would make it seem like I thought this was an honest mistake. “That’s okay that you misplaced it. I’m sure once I tell Tom what happened, he’ll squeeze me in. I’ll just grab him for a second when he comes out.”

  It was hard to tell because of her fake spray tan, but I thought she might have paled a shade. She snatched up the phone on her desk. “I’ll call him and see what he can do.”

  It turned out I was showing my ignorance of estate law by even going. I wouldn’t have been able to add Russ as a part-owner of Sugarwood had the estate not already been settled.

  I came out of his office less than five minutes after I went in. I’d told Russ it would be an hour before I was back. The responsible part of me said I should head back to Sugarwood early regardless. The paranoid part of me said I needed to see if I could find out the identity of the girl-woman in Noah’s photo.

  The Fair Haven library was one street over from Tom McClanahan’s office. One of the things I loved about small town living was how close everything was. Back in DC, I’d often have to be in the car for forty-five minutes to reach something that wasn’t any farther away than one side of Fair Haven to the other.

  Had it not been winter, I would have walked. As it was, I drove the short distance. My lips and hands were already chapped beyond repair.

  The Fair Haven library smelled like old paper and lemon Pinesol. The best part of law school, in my opinion, was access to the library. The smell and the quiet were soothing.

  Fair Haven’s library had the smell, but not the quiet. A cluster of children giggled and ducked through the children’s section to the right of the front door. Based on the fact that only one harried-looking adult supervised them, they might have been an after-school program. At least they were at the library. There were worse places a kid could be after school let out.

  The librarian at the check-out desk pointed me toward the archives—second floor, toward the back. Unfortunately, none of the records had been archived online, which meant I’d be searching through records by hand rather than being able to search for Tony’s last name.

  The second floor had the peace I’d been hoping for. I easily found the shelves where they stored the Fair Haven yearbooks dating back to the first one they’d ever printed.

  The only certain date I had was that three years ago the girl Noah was accused of being improper with had been fifteen. That likely made her a sophomore. I took the yearbook for that year off the shelf and wiggled the now-wrinkled photo from my purse.

  I’d know quickly whether my suspicions were right or not.

  I flipped to the sophomore class and to the R’s, wagering the girl would have the same last name as Tony. A younger version of the face in Noah’s photo stared back at me.

  I pulled out my phone, entered Elise’s number, and texted The girl was Stacey Rathmell. Elise would know who I meant.

  And now I’d pray that I’d been wrong about what Tony might have been willing to do to avenge her and stop the man he believed had hurt her.

  I called Russ’ cell phone on my way back to Sugarwood. With the number of times he’d mentioned my visit with Tom McClanahan the past couple of days, I knew he was worrying about the implications if we didn’t have a slightly larger slush fund should Sugarwood have a few unprofitable years. I didn’t want to leave him wondering any longer, especially since I’d have to swing by my house to change clothes and let the dogs out before I returned to work.

  He sounded out of breath when he answered. My phone was Bluetooth-enabled, so his voice played through my speakers, magnifying every huffing intake of air.

  “Are you okay?” I asked and pushed my car a little faster. I wouldn’t get a ticket at this speed in DC, but in Fair Haven…well, I’d have to hope no one spotted me.

  “The reverse osmosis machine’s making a funny hissing whistle. Normally Noah’d handle it, but with him not here, I’m trying to figure out what might be wrong with it. I was all the way under the machine before you called. Had to crawl back out to answer.”

  This had to be some bad cosmic joke. Shouldn’t the fact that I’d started going to church mean that my life got better? If Mark had still been my friend, I would have asked him—he’d had a good answer for all my other questions about God—but asking Mark wasn’t an option anymore. I could ask the pastor, but I wasn’t sure if there was some protocol to that or not.

  “I’ll let you get back to it,” I said to Russ. “I just called to tell you—”

  A boom ricocheted through my car speakers.

  12

  I screamed and jerked my steering wheel. My car skidded onto the icy shoulder. I slammed on my brakes, but they locked and I kept sliding, right into the snowbank in the ditch. The call with Russ had dropped.

  I sat there, my pulse pounding loud enough in my ears that it sounded like an avalanche bearing down on me. And all I could think was that my air bag hadn’t deployed again, and it probably should have, because I was in a ditch. And I could be dead right now. And Russ might be dead.

  Something had exploded at Sugarwood.

  My hands were shaking so badly that it took me two tries to correctly dial 9-1-1. I explained to the dispatcher what I’d heard. He assured me they’d send police, an ambulance, and a fire truck.

  I hung up without telling him that I was in a ditch. I could call back if it came to that, but if I did, I’d have to wait for police and maybe even an ambulance for myself. I was pretty sure I hadn’t hit my head on the steering wheel, so I should be fine.

  What I needed was to get home and find out what had happened.

  The person I most wanted to call was Mark, but I couldn’t, not even now. I tried to call Erik, but as was the new normal since he’d become interim chief, his line was busy. I went straight to voicemail. I didn’t bother leaving a message.

  Instead, I called the only other person I had to call anymore. At least the only person who might be able to get to me fast enough and get me to Sugarwood to find out what had happened.

  “Scott,” Elise’s voice said.

  Considering how much she’d disliked me less than two weeks ago, she was remarkably patient as I blurted out my story again, this time adding in the fact that I’d driven my car into a ditch. In the back of my mind, I recognized the tone in her voice as the same one she’d used on the child who’d called her about the missing tooth. The random thought that she was probably a great mom flitted through my mind.

  Elise told me I should get out of my car to wait for her. She didn’t want me inside with the engine running in case the exhaust pipe was plugged by snow and I asphyxiated myself. It was rare to meet someone with nearly as paranoid a mind as I had.

  She was right. Had circumstances been different, we might have been friends.

  The shoulder I’d dislocated last fall ached as I undid my seatbelt and climbed up out of the ditch. Fortunately for me, temperatures had to come up above freezing for the sap to run, which meant I wasn’t in sub-zero temperatures while waiting.

  I tried calling Russ’ cell phone back twice in the time it took Elise
to reach me. No answer. With each failed attempt, my heart climbed higher in my throat until I could barely swallow around it.

  When Elise rolled up, her lights were on and she stopped the car only long enough for me to jump in and buckle up.

  “Have you heard anything yet?” I asked.

  She shook her head. The contrast between her dark hair and her pale skin was starker than when I’d last seen her. It took me a minute to remember that Russ had once been engaged to Mark’s aunt before she died from cancer. It could have been a maternal aunt, but it might have also been a shared aunt, so Elise might view Russ with the same affection that Mark did, as a person who would have been family had life gone differently.

  She was probably more scared right now than I was, and I had no comfort to give her.

  As we pulled into the parking lot out front of the sugar shack, we couldn’t get anywhere near the building. A firetruck and Fair Haven police cruiser blocked the way, and an ambulance was parked to one side beyond them. I caught a glimpse of Officer Quincey Dornbush’s balding head bobbing around in the crowd of milling people.

  Thankfully, no flames licked from the building. Whatever had exploded either hadn’t caused a larger fire or the fire department had already put it out.

  We jogged toward the chaos, Elise leading the way and parting the crowd in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to. The flashing lights and impending sunset gave the whole setting the feel of a creepy outdoor disco. We came out the other side, closer to the building and the ambulance.

  Russ and another woman I recognized as one of our employees sat on the back edge of the ambulance, a paramedic working on each of them. Streaks of dark blood ran down the side of Russ’ head and dampened the left shoulder of his shirt, but he was upright and talking.

  I would have thrown my arms around him if that wouldn’t have gotten in the way of his treatment. “What happened?”