“Maybe you should come by and do some sort of cleansing ritual.” That ought to distract her from any further interest in big cats or single men. “I wouldn’t want any derision-flavored syrup.”
“What this place needs more than anything is some holiday cheer.” Mom looked around the porch and shook her head sadly at the faded mums and tattered ornamental cabbages. “I’ll take care of it while you’re off on your pickle errand.”
Eight
I intended to set off right away to deliver the pickles but I spotted Hanley in back of the barn with Grampa. Grampa pointed at the trail leading into the north part of the property, and Hanley nodded and started off on his own. Grampa wandered off toward the lower field where he turns out his cows if the weather is decent. I hung back so he wouldn’t spot me following Hanley. Talking about extramarital affairs is not something I wanted to do in front of my grandfather, no matter how much I preferred not to deal with Hanley on my own. Besides, I thought he might be more inclined to tell the truth to just one person instead of a group.
Hanley wasn’t in much of a hurry so it was easy enough to catch up even factoring in the wait for Grampa to disappear from view. I hustled up behind him just as he was coming to a stop in front of a large sugar maple with a broken limb that flopped like a hangnail.
“I see Grampa sent you to one of our neediest.” I hadn’t been trying to be quiet but I must have been doing a pretty good job because he jumped up off the ground like I’d dropped a sledgehammer on his foot. It made me wonder if he had a guilty conscience.
“Dani, you snuck up on me real quiet like. What’re you doing here?”
“Well, I may not be making syrup at this time of year, but I try to walk the property and check on trees every day. I can’t get to all the property every day, but in the course of a week or so, I can get my eyes on most of the trees.” Now to figure out how to insert his affair with Jill into the conversation. “When I was talking to Jill Hayes yesterday, she said she can do hers every day in one short trip.” I kept my eyes pealed on Hanley’s face. He squirmed a bit at her name, tracing a circle with the toe of his boot in the leaf litter at the base of the tree. Gotcha.
“Her property is a lot smaller than this one.”
“Do you service her, too?” I asked. He looked up, startled. “Her trees, I mean.”
“I tend out on her trees. Hers isn’t the biggest account I have, not by a long poke, but every client’s important.”
“Jill said she gets a bit of extra service from you that might not be on the books with Connie.” I felt a little sick and a whole lot embarrassed even letting those words leak out between my lips.
“Are you flirting with me?” Hanley looked like he’d swallowed down one of Grandma’s hot biscuits slathered with butter and drizzled with maple syrup. “Are you asking if you can sign up for extra services, too?” He took a step back from the tree and a step closer to me.
“Was the big bruise on Jill’s face one of the extra services?”
“Did she say I did that to her?”
“She said you’d had a bit too much to drink while the two of you were up at the camp on Friday night and that you let loose on her.”
“I don’t remember things going just exactly like that.”
“But you might not remember if you’d been drinking as much as she said you had, would you?”
“Maybe not.”
“Do remember being with Jill?” I wondered how credible a witness he was. If he didn’t remember hitting her, would he remember her even being around? And even if he did, could his memory be trusted?
“Jill is very memorable, if you follow my meaning.” Hanley winked at me and, even worse, licked his lips. I could do without that picture being seared into my brain, but I guess I had asked for it by poking my nose into police business.
“So she was with you on Friday night?”
“Why do you care? I’m not your husband.”
“Jill wasn’t at the pancake breakfast like she was supposed to be. When I asked her why, she said it was because of the bruise you gave her.”
“Why is it your business?”
“Because it is my business that is being impacted by Alanza’s death. If Jill knew not to go to the breakfast, that looks like she had something to do with what happened to Alanza.”
“Jill was with me on Friday night. But I wished I hadn’t been away from home.”
“Why not? If Jill was so memorable, I would have thought you’d be glad of all the time you can spend together.”
“Because of the goats. I came back to a hell of a mess. Something got into the goat pen and tore things up good on Friday night while I was away. Connie was all shook up about it. She couldn’t get me on the cell phone since the coverage up there ain’t too good.”
“What do you think did it?”
“It’s hard to say. The fencing was damaged; one goat was cut up pretty bad but’ll recover. Another one is just missing, like it was spirited off. It makes me wonder if that Fish and Game guy is really telling all he knows or if there is something more dangerous on the loose around here than he is admitting.” I considered the possibility that Graham was holding something back. Or maybe he wasn’t aware there was a big cat in the group of animals released because the guy who let him out hadn’t admitted it. Next stop, Connie’s, I was hoping to spot evidence of a mountain lion.
• • •
Connie waved me into the hallway of her antique cape, a phone clamped tightly between her ear and shoulder. I stood in the cramped space trying to shove down my feelings of claustrophobia. Old farm tools with pointy ends and hooks covered the walls and made the hall feel like an inside-out cheese grater. There might have been a hall table in there, too, but it was hard to tell because of the mounds of unopened mail, library books, and firewood stacked every which way. Connie’s dog, Profiterole, curled up in his basket, which mostly blocked the entrance to the kitchen. I wondered what Hanley’s camp looked like inside and if he liked to go there to get away from all the mess that surrounded him at home.
“Sorry about that, Dani. One of my bookkeeping clients needed me to clarify something. So what brings you by?” Connie ran her rough hand through her curly graying hair. She looked more like a farmer than an office worker with her weathered complexion, well-muscled hands, and rugged, earth mother clothing.
“Hanley was up checking our trees today and he told me about the trouble with your goats. I wondered if I could take a look.”
“Well, sure you can, but why would you want to?”
“Let’s just say I have a bet going with the local Fish and Game officer about what might have done it.”
“That sure is a mess with all those animals running around. Do you think this had something to do with all that?”
“I don’t know but it seems strange that the same night a bunch of exotic animals get loose, you end up with your goats getting attacked.”
“If it turns out it was that truck driver’s fault, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Whatever could that guy have been thinking when he let those animals out?”
“I think he was thinking about how his wife was being unfaithful to him with someone else he trusted.” I tried gauging Connie’s reaction to the topic of infidelity without being too obvious. The lines between her eyebrows scrunched down deeper, whatever that meant.
“That would be disheartening, but even so, you know how I feel about my goats.”
“I do. Hanley said you were all alone when it happened, too.”
“I was. I was too angry and worried for the goats to be scared, so it could have been worse.” Connie pried the closet door open as far as she could, given the stack of newspapers on the floor in front of it. Wrapping herself in a canvas jacket that looked like it belonged to Hanley, she led the way out to the goat enclosure.
The fence was indeed damaged like Hanley had said. Some of the heavy wire sagged out of shape and was distended in several places. The ground inside the enclosure looke
d torn up like there had been an altercation of some sort. There wasn’t much else to see until we went inside the barn at the end of the enclosure. Connie entered the building and motioned for me to follow. At first it was difficult to see, the light levels were low, and the colors were mostly drab browns and wood tones. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out several animals huddled together at the far end of the barn in one of the old horse stalls.
“Clementine was the one scraped up in the fray,” Connie said, pointing at a white female with a crooked horn. She had a nasty gash along her haunch and someone had covered it with ointment, which glistened against her matted fur. All the goats, except Clementine, took a few tentative steps toward Connie as she clucked at them.
“She seems like she’s still afraid,” I said, noting the way she hung back from the others, cowering against the back wall.
“She must be. Clementine usually runs right over me with her displays of affection.”
“What about the one Hanley said went missing?”
“It was her sister, Susannah. The two were very close. Clementine must be heartbroken.” I wondered if one of them behaved like Celadon. I’m not sure I could see myself feeling as heartbroken if Celadon simply went missing one evening. I might even be the tiniest bit relieved.
“Do you have any idea what might have done this?” I had my own, of course, but there was no way I was going to be the one to mention the mountain lion to her if she hadn’t heard it through the grapevine already.
“Well, I heard you thought you saw a mountain lion, and until this happened, I agreed with the rest of the folks in town that you had finally cracked from all the Christmas hoopla your family puts together. But now, I’m not so sure.”
“So you think it could have been a mountain lion?”
“I don’t know what else could have come in here and then jumped back out with a full-grown goat in tow. Do you?”
“I don’t need to be convinced. I saw the thing with my own eyes.”
“What did Fish and Game say?”
“There is no such thing in New Hampshire anymore.”
“Well, then, maybe it was a yeti.”
“Maybe you had a yeti here messing with your goats, but there was a mountain lion at my sugarhouse and I hope we can prove it.”
“Well, whatever you do, make sure you tell your grandfather to fortify the situation in your own barn. I’d hate for his cows to meet a similar fate.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him. And please let me know if you have any more trouble. I know the Fish and Game guy’s number and would be happy to ask him to give a look around.”
“I’ll do that. And if you see Hanley when you get home be sure to tell him I’m making a tuna noodle casserole for dinner. There’s nothing like making a man’s favorite meal to keep him happy at home.” Maybe Hanley had lied about his favorite meal. Or else Jill was an even better cook than Connie.
• • •
I always loved the ride over to Roland’s place even if the reason was a mundane errand like a pickle delivery. The road wound through some of the prettiest parts of town, with peeks at the mountains and even a glimpse of the lake along one stretch. I’d been there many times delivering syrup for the inn. Roland and his wife, Felicia, had been kind enough to offer to use only Greener Pastures syrup on their guests’ breakfast tables and even to sell bottles of it at the front desk.
Roland and Felicia Chick had waited until their kids were grown and then set about realizing their lifelong dream of running an inn. Everything about the place spoke of how much care they had lavished on it. The windows gleamed, the paint dazzled, the gardens lulled. Even the birds frolicked in a way that was almost magically cheerful. Every bit of it was enchanting except for the view.
From the gracious, wraparound porch with its gingerbread trim and lush hanging baskets of hyperactively blooming petunias, you used to be able to look out over the gentle rolling hills in the distance covered in dense trees and shrubs. Now, standing out like a cockroach on a wedding cake, a mini storage facility blighted the view. The property line lay just beyond a carefully planted border of flowering quince, lilac, and weigela the Chicks had installed several years earlier. A road leading into Alanza’s property cut right behind the border and some of the heavy equipment used to construct it had demolished some prized specimens and enabled an unobstructed view of the metal shacks. The machines were still there, poised and threatening like an enemy army just beyond a city wall.
Roland had developed angina and a nervous twitch. His wife had taken on the new hobby of constantly monitoring his blood pressure. It was a wonder Roland had outlasted Alanza. With the breakfast rush over, Roland leaned against the front desk looking like he had nothing on his mind but time.
“Hey there, Dani. What brings you by? Lowell was already here confiscating your syrup for testing.” I hadn’t even considered that could happen. He hadn’t mentioned it to me. But maybe I wasn’t his first priority while handling a murder investigation. I wasn’t so overwhelmed with a sense of my own importance that I couldn’t see that without being told. Still, it was a bit of a blow to realize my syrup was being treated like a public health hazard.
“Actually, I’m here for the pickles. Only three days ’til Thanksgiving.” I reached into my tote bag and dug out two jars of Grandma’s famous maple syrup bread-and-butter pickles. “But I wish I were here delivering syrup. I don’t know when I’ll be back in business.”
“I’m so sorry. I know what it means to have a business you’ve worked so hard to establish turn to a pile of horse dung right in front of your eyes.”
“That view of the storage facility is pretty bad.” Even in the daylight it was easy to see Alanza’s custom-ordered, very pricey, neon sign, flashing on and off with enough wattage to kill bugs from a distance. It looked like Santa had put his head together with a Las Vegas casino owner to design the thing. When she had first turned it on, panicked calls had come into the police station from all over the area saying Sugar Grove was being visited by alien crafts.
“And it was only going to get worse with her deciding to scalp Bett’s Knob.”
“She was planning to do what?” I was horrified. Bett’s Knob lay within the confines of Alanza’s property, but the whole community felt it belonged to us all. It wasn’t a large part of the property, but it had a view that went on for miles. It rose up above the surrounding land enough to be visible from most of the town and boasted some of the finest displays of fall foliage in the area. As a matter of fact, after years of lobbying, the Chamber of Commerce had convinced the select board to approve plans for one of those oversized View-Masters alongside the turnpike to attract more business to town during leaf-peeping season.
The Chamber fund-raised and solicited donations from people all over the community and had even held an unveiling ceremony for the oversized View-Master. Myra Bett Phelps, one of the members of the family after whom the lumpy foothill formation was named, had the honor of yanking the red, white, and blue vinyl tablecloth off the thing and leading the crowd, such as it was, in an ear-thrumming rendition of the National Anthem.
“You hadn’t heard? Alanza announced at the last Chamber of Commerce meeting that she was going to start up a sugaring operation. When I asked her how much more she was planning to impact my inn, she told me about Bett’s Knob.” Why Alanza would choose to tap her own trees was entirely beyond me. I loved the business myself but I couldn’t imagine just deciding one day to go into it without any prior experience. It wasn’t as if she was even a country girl at heart. I’d never even seen her in a pair of shoes with a less than two-inch heel. I tried to picture her standing in a pair of snowshoes, wearing a miniskirt, drilling holes in a maple to place a spile. I couldn’t even picture her figuring out how to hold the drill, let alone tap the tree. The only thing I could imagine her tapping was her pointy-toed pumps to a lively beat at a dance club.
“She’d never have been allowed to clear Bett’s Knob, would she? What about f
iling an ‘intent to cut’ form with the town?”
“She didn’t need to file an intent to cut if the timber was being used to boil sap down for syrup.” He was right, of course. Alanza could have cut as much timber as she wanted if she used the wood for her own sugaring operation. And she had enough trees on the property to produce a lot of firewood and a lot of sap. As long as she didn’t confuse the maples for the firewood. If someone had killed Alanza, they had done the town an even bigger favor than I had thought.
“So just like the rest of us, I bet you weren’t too upset to see her face plant in the pancakes then.” It seemed like as good an opening as any. And it wasn’t like I was questioning him. We were just chatting about neighbors like anyone does from time to time. I had to keep it light. Alienating any potential business at this point would be disastrous. The last thing I needed was more ill will.
“The worst thing about that whole situation was that it didn’t happen before that God-awful shanty town sprang up.” Roland’s face was beginning to flush like an ice pop. Maybe he wasn’t going to be too long following Alanza off to wherever she went on the other side. Not that I’m saying I’d expect them to end up in the same place.
“Well, at least the construction on her property should grind to a halt. That should be good news for you and Felicia, shouldn’t it?”
“It’s great that nothing more is likely straightaway, but I don’t know what whoever gets the property now will do with it.”
“So you don’t know who will be getting the property then?”
“No idea. I didn’t know Alanza until she had settled into the house over there and started introducing herself around town as the owner. If I had known how things were going to go, I would have sold the business and headed south like all the rest of the geezers.”
“You’re not a geezer and you know it.” Felicia Chick, Roland’s wife of thirty-something years, emerged through the doorway, her arms full of folded table linen. “Are those from your grandmother?” She nodded toward the pickles.
Drizzled with Death (A Sugar Grove Mystery) Page 9