The Case of the Abandoned Aussie

by B R Snow

  “Constantly,” I said. “What’s going on, Mom?”

  “Oh, I thought I’d just stop by and congratulate my two heroes,” she said, beaming with pride. “The town is simply buzzing about how you saved that poor woman’s life last night.”

  “Mom, the people who saved Roxanne’s life were the medical people. Josie and I were just lucky to show up when we did.”

  “Don’t be modest, darling,” she said, sitting down on the couch next to Chloe.

  I was shocked because my mother normally kept her distance from all four-legged creatures. Chloe hopped onto her lap, and my mother began to gently stroke her fur. Josie watched for a moment, then gave me the ‘What the heck is happening’ look. I shrugged and looked back at the couch where Chloe had flipped over expecting a tummy rub. My mother complied, and I watched her meticulously groomed and painted nails start to trail up and down the dog’s stomach. Chloe kicked a leg, and her tongue hung from the corner of her mouth.

  “You like that, don’t you?” my mother said, laughing. “What a good girl. Who’s the good girl?”

  “Mom?” I said with genuine concern. “Are you okay? Did you fall and hit your head or something?”

  “No, darling,” she said, continuing to put Chloe in a trance. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” I said, again glancing briefly at Josie. “If you say so.” Then the lightbulb went on. “Wait a minute,” I said, staring at her. “Who is he?”

  “What on earth are you talking about, darling?” she said, flashing me a coy smile.

  “Your newfound love for dogs,” I said. “Let me guess. Your new flame is a dog lover. No, that wouldn’t be enough by itself. Wait a minute, you’re dating a vet, aren’t you?”

  My mother smiled at me and nodded.

  “Very good, darling. You got it in on your first try.”

  Josie roared with laughter.

  “Ah, Mrs. C., you are too much,” Josie said. “Who is it?”

  “If you must know, he’s a lovely widower in his late forties with a very successful veterinary practice outside of Syracuse,” she said, increasing the speed of her tummy rub which caused both of Chloe’s legs to kick uncontrollably. My mother watched the dog’s reaction, and her eyes danced.

  “Jim Wilkins?” Josie said.

  “Yes, it is,” my mother said. Surprised, she looked up at Josie. “How do you know Jim?”

  “We run into each other at various meetings and the occasional conference. He’s a great guy. Well done, Mrs. C.”

  “Thanks, dear. Yes, he is wonderful.”

  “Absolutely,” Josie said. “All the female vets, including me, think he’s very sexy.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re interested in him, Josie. If you are, I’ll just fold my tent right now.”

  I laughed as my mother spread her hands and looked at me.

  “I mean, just look at her,” my mother said, shrugging to emphasize her point. “How does anyone compete with that?”

  “Interested in Jim? Not a chance,” Josie said, shaking her head. “He’s way too old for me.”

  “Well, fortunately, his age is not a problem for me,” she said, resuming Chloe’s tummy rub.

  “Yeah, you got lucky, Mom. He’s around fifty, and since your dating formula is half your age plus seven, it looks like he just made it in under the wire.”

  “That is not funny, darling,” she said, then nodded at my laptop. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to find out anything I can about an old maple syrup company. Sugarland Farms.”

  “Sugarland Farms,” she said, nodding. “I remember them.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Sure. It was a very popular brand when I was younger. Now that I think about, they just disappeared.” She gently slid out from underneath Chloe to stand and brush herself off. “I need to run.”

  “Do you remember anything about the company?” I said.

  “Not really. Other than the fact that they made great syrup. But if it’s that important you could always head up to Smithville and check it out. I’m sure there are still some people around who remember it.”

  “Smithville?”

  “Yeah,” my mother said. “It’s a small town about half an hour outside of Ottawa. It’s only about an hour and a half from here at the most.”

  “They were based out of Smithville?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I remember because the town was always mentioned in their commercials. Something about how their syrup was sweeter than a Smithville sunset. It was one of those annoying jingles you couldn’t get out of your head.”

  She gave Chloe one final ear scratch, then waved goodbye and strolled out of the office. I looked at Josie who was frowning and staring at the wall. She knew what was coming.

  “Do I even need to ask?” I said.

  “No, I’ll go clear my afternoon,” she said, getting up out of her chair. “And then we’re done with this thing, right?”

  “Oh, without a doubt.”

  Judging from the look on her face as she left, I’m not quite sure she believed me.

  Chapter 31

  As we always did whenever we drove across the Thousand Islands Bridge that led to Wellesley Island then ultimately the Canadian mainland, Josie and I fell silent as we neared the apex and looked around in both directions at the sight below. The sun was bright, the wind low, and the water below was a dark blue sheet of glass interspersed with islands of various sizes. Even though I’d seen it hundreds of times throughout my life, it still took my breath away.

  At the Canadian Immigration checkpoint, the official played twenty questions with us, primarily because he wanted to prolong his time ogling Josie who was in the passenger seat. I’m sure his final question would have been to ask for her phone number, but the line of cars behind ours grew to the point when he was finally forced to wave us on our way with a sad smile.

  “I think he was trying to come up with a reason to give you a cavity search,” I said.

  Josie laughed.

  “Actually, I think he was checking you out,” she said.

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “What’s the road we take off of 15?”

  Josie checked the map.

  “Left on Route 43, stay on that for about five miles, then right on 511 and that will take us right into Smithville. Easy.”

  “You think we should have asked Jackson to come with us?” I said.

  “No, probably not,” she said, adjusting the passenger seat to a reclining position. “He’s buried at the moment, and if this turns out to be a total waste of time, which I have a feeling it will, that would only give Jackson one more reason to get mad at us.”

  “I thought we’d stop at that bakery in Gananoque on the way back,” I said.

  “Oooh, Panache. What a great idea,” she said. “You’re offering just to make sure I don’t get to use the total waste of time crack again, aren’t you?”

  “Yup. But we are running a bit low on sweets at the house.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Josie said. “I went overboard last night when we finally got home.”

  Overboard? She’d eaten enough desserts to put a kindergarten class into a sugar coma. No wonder she hadn’t been able to get to sleep. But she was doing her best to catch up now as the car ride and comfortable leather seat worked their magic. She snored softly in the passenger seat, forcing me to turn the music up a bit.

  An hour later I pulled into the small parking lot in front of the Smithville Gazette, a local weekly newspaper that printed everything you needed to know. At least that’s what the faded wood sign on the front of the building said. But who was I to disagree? I nudged Josie awake and hopped out of the car and looked around. Josie climbed out and arched her back to stretch.

  “It’s Clay Bay without the water,” she said.

  “Yeah, that about sums it up,” I agreed.

  I pointed at the front door, and we walked inside. Either all the staff was out covering breaking
news, or things were pretty quiet in Smithville. The space looked like it was converted from an old general store, or perhaps a small manufacturing operation of some sort. But it was immaculate, and its polished wood floors glistened in the sunlight that poured in through two massive picture windows on the far side of the building. A woman in her sixties came out of an office on one side and approached the front counter where we were standing.

  “I thought I heard somebody come in,” she said. “May I help you?”

  We introduced ourselves, and she listened as I provided a quick overview of the reason behind our visit. I left out the part about how our snooping – I referred to it as research – was connected to the recent rash of murders in Clay Bay. She nodded and then opened the door that led past the counter into what she called the newsroom.

  “How long has the Gazette been in business, Mrs. Johnson?”

  “1897,” she said, glancing around the room with pride. “I bought it twenty-three years ago. And despite the best efforts of the internet to kill off every bit of newsprint, we’re hanging in there.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said.

  That was true. I was. She seemed like a nice woman, and every town should have a local newspaper that provided a bit of common ground for the people who lived there.

  “In the morning, there’s just something special about holding your coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other.”

  “I’m not familiar with that,” Josie said.

  “You’re not a coffee drinker, dear?” Mrs. Johnson said.

  “Oh, I drink it all the time,” Josie said. “I just never have a free hand to hold the paper.”

  “What’s in your other hand?”

  “Usually, a sandwich,” Josie said, laughing.

  “Oh, you’re an eater,” she said, laughing along. “Me too. And it shows.” She took a step back and gave Josie the once over. “You must exercise a lot.”

  “Well, I do spend a lot of time on wild goose chases,” Josie said.

  She is so going to pay for that crack.

  “Sugarland Farms,” Mrs. Johnson said as she opened a door that led downstairs. She turned the lights on. “I haven’t heard that name in years.”

  “Do you remember the company?” I said, carefully making my way down the wooden stairs leading to a large basement.

  “I remember the story,” she said, pausing to look around and get her bearings among the shelves and boxes that filled most of the floor space. “But it happened before I moved here and bought the paper.”

  She headed for a stack of shelves along one of the walls and put her glasses on to read the labels.

  “Here we go,” she said. “I think it was around 1985, maybe 86.” She removed her glasses and looked at us. “I should probably buy a scanner and get all this digitized, but somehow that seems sacrilegious. Does that make any sense?”

  “Actually, it does,” I said.

  “Well, I’m going to leave you to it,” she said. “I’ll be here all day so take all the time you need. And if you have any questions, just let me know.”

  “Thanks so much, Mrs. Johnson,” I said.

  She waved and slowly made her way up the stairs.

  “What was all that about digitization?” Josie said.

  “She was saying that while you can’t fight the advancement of technology, you don’t have to turn over all your life history to it.”

  “Really?” Josie said, frowning. “Must be newspaper speak.”

  I chuckled and turned toward the shelf. Together, we lifted two boxes labeled 1985 and carefully placed them on a nearby table. Inside were copies of all fifty-two Smithville Gazette editions for that year. Each one was covered with a clear plastic bag that seemed to be doing a decent job preserving the newsprint. We went through them in order, starting with the first week in January. In a late August edition, we hit the first mention of Sugarland Farms.

  “Here’s a story about the pending sale of Sugarland,” Josie said.

  I leaned over her shoulder and read along.

  “But it doesn’t mention the buyer,” I said.

  “No,” she said, scanning the rest of the article. She flipped through the rest of the paper, then closed it and slid it back into its plastic bag while I grabbed the next week’s edition.

  “Here’s another story about it,” I said. “It says the sale of Sugarland Farms while turning contentious is still on track.” I read the rest of the article and frowned when I finished. “The reporter didn’t dig very deep.”

  “It must have been a huge story in town,” Josie said. “It doesn’t seem like the sort of place where a lot of big news would be made.”

  “Neither’s Clay Bay,” I said, moving onto the next week’s edition.

  “Good point,” Josie said. “But I’d expect to see a lot more details.”

  “Maybe somebody gave the reporter a bit of cash to go easy on the specifics,” I said.

  We found another mention of the sale being finalized in one of the December editions, then continued into 1986. In February, we hit the motherlode.

  “Wow,” I said, reading the headline. “Valentine’s Day Murder-Suicide Rocks Smithville.”

  Josie leaned over my shoulder to read the article.

  “Jonathan Wilson, former owner of Sugarland Farms. Geez, he shot his wife, then killed himself. And in front of their six-year-old daughter. Who could do that?”

  “I have no idea. What could have possibly provoked him to do something like that?”

  “I need to sit down,” Josie said, looking away from the photos. “I feel sick to my stomach.”

  While she recovered, I kept reading. There was one more reference in a June edition.

  “The daughter started exhibiting strange behaviors about four months after she saw it happen,” I said.

  “Can’t blame her for that,” Josie said. “What happened to her?”

  “It sounds like she was either institutionalized or put in a foster home. I can’t tell from the way this is written. But the article mentions frequent episodes of sub-psychotic rage.”

  We turned around when he heard the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. Mrs. Johnson headed toward us carrying a small shoebox.

  “I found this upstairs in one of our closets,” she said. “We like to save old advertising and marketing trinkets from local companies when we come across them. It looks like there are a couple of Sugarland items in here. I thought you might like to see them.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Johnson,” I said.

  She handed us the shoebox and headed back up the stairs. Josie started rummaging through the box.

  “Here’s an old contest they ran for schoolkids. All they had to do was send in three labels for a chance to win a tour of the Sugarland facility. And here are the words to their jingle. And your mom remembered correctly. Sweeter than a Smithville sunrise.”

  I glanced down at the words to the jingle that were written out in the manner they were supposed to be sung. It reminded me of the follow the bouncing ball sing-along technique that occasionally still showed up in commercials.

  “It would help if we knew the tune to sing,” I said.

  Then a lightbulb went off.

  I silently sang the words to the children’s song still stuck in my head from the other day.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “What is it?” Josie said.

  “The girl was six when it happened, right?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Josie said.

  “That would put her in her late-thirties now,” I said heading for the stairs as various ideas and questions exploded in my head.

  “Where are you going?” Josie said, climbing to her feet.

  “To ask Mrs. Johnson where the local cemetery is,” I said, bouncing up the stairs two at a time.

  Like most places in Smithville, the cemetery wasn’t far away. We covered the three miles in less than ten minutes, and that included making a wrong turn on one of the winding country roads that se
emed to surround the town. I stopped the car next to a strand of trees that ran along the outer perimeter of the cemetery and turned it off. Another car was parked on the same side of the road about two hundred yards ahead of ours.

  My chest heaved as I tried to both catch my breath and deal with the adrenaline rush flowing through my body. Josie stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “Hand me my binoculars,” I said.

  Josie opened the glove box and handed them to me. I tore them from their case and took a look at the parked car. Then I scanned the cemetery. I stopped when I saw the back of a lone woman kneeling down in front of a headstone arranging several pots of plants and flowers.

  “What on earth is going on?” Josie said, her face a mixture of concern and bewilderment.

  “Take a look,” I said, handing her the binoculars.

  She held the binoculars up and stared at the woman kneeling in front of the grave.

  “Is that Rosaline?” she said.

  “Yes. It certainly is.”

  “She’s the daughter? The six-year-old who watched her dad murder her mother and then kill himself?”

  “It has to be her,” I said.

  “But what’s the connection with the Crawfords?” Josie said, taking another look through the binoculars.

  “My guess is that Crawford was the one who bought Sugarland Farms. I don’t have a clue why it wasn’t mentioned in the stories.”

  “But she works for his company,” Josie said.

  “Not only that, if it plays out the way she wants, she’s going to be running it.”

  “So this whole thing was a set up to get control of the company?”

  “I think that’s part of it,” I said, taking the binoculars back for another look. “But primarily Rosaline must be out for revenge.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Now that’s a very good question,” I said, lowering the binoculars with a frown on my face. “What do you want to do?”

  “Well, I’m certainly not going to confront her. It’s pretty clear that she still has issues.”

  Despite the seriousness and potential danger of our situation, I laughed at Josie’s deadpan delivery.

  “Yeah, issues like sub-psychotic rage,” I said. “But we can’t just let her drive off. The other day at breakfast she mentioned something about going into hiding. At the time I thought she was being overly dramatic with her I’m in danger routine.”