He looked up at me as my feet came to a stop a little distance from him. His dark canvas jacket was smeared with soot and darkened in patches by the damp. I caught sight of someone’s outline in the kitchen window and waved. Even if Roland were a crazed poisoner, would he really do away with me right in front of his witness? I hoped she was squeamish or religious or something and he wouldn’t dream of upsetting her. I drew a deep breath and broached the topic. In a roundabout way. I had no desire to actually accuse him of lying. Especially if he was hiding the fact he committed a murder.
“Well, what brings you by this morning?” Roland waved his big hand in front of his florid face, and I hoped the color was due to the heat of the fire and not another bout of high blood pressure. I didn’t want to say anything to push him over the edge.
“I’ve been thinking about my business.”
“That’s the plight of the small business owner. You don’t realize it is going to consume you entirely. There ought to be a health warning when you file papers with the state to go into business for yourself.” Roland turned a bit of sizzling brush over with his stick and sparked a blaze.
“I’m sure you can imagine the news about Alanza hasn’t been too helpful for a company like mine.”
“Even when she’s dead, that woman is still messing things up for people around here.” Roland shook his head like a person who had seen too much in his time.
“I’m hoping things will get back on track for Greener Pastures just as soon as this whole mess gets cleared up about who was really responsible for putting the poison in the syrup.”
“Good attitude. I hope you find a way to turn things around. A good reputation is the best thing a company can have.”
“I hoped you’d say that. I have been thinking of some ways to bring people into the sugarhouse so they can see our operation firsthand and get to find out how clean and wholesome the place is, not at all the sort of place to worry about buying edibles. And that’s where I thought maybe you could help.”
“What is it that you need?”
“I thought since you guys are so popular at the Griddle and Fiddle, I might be able to convince your band to play at Greener Pastures at sugaring time. You guys really draw a crowd.” So maybe that was stretching things just a little, but they did sound good and he would have a hard time not feeling kindly toward me after I had slathered all that butter on him.
“I don’t know about drawing a huge crowd, but I like to think we are competent enough and our hearts are in the right place.”
“Don’t be so modest. You guys are the favorites every month at the Griddle and Fiddle. Dean tells me you even have a regular rehearsal schedule. That takes a commitment to your craft that goes above and beyond the casual players that account for most of the performers at the Stack.”
“I never thought of it that way. I guess we do make it a priority more than some.”
“And your efforts seem to really stick even when you don’t have the chance to get together. Like last Friday night.” Not the smoothest of segues but eventually I needed to get to the point or just get on home instead.
“We did practice last Friday night. We practice every Friday night.”
“But not this Friday. Dean told me you canceled and so they didn’t have practice.” Roland stabbed the stick he was holding into the center of the smoldering pile with enough savagery that it seemed he was imagining Alanza in there somewhere toasting to a crisp.
“No. Not this Friday. And I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything about it to Felicia.” Well, that was just getting better and better.
“I can’t promise something like that until I know what you were doing instead. You had a serious bone to pick with Alanza and that was exactly when the syrup was being poisoned.” Roland gave me a long look.
“You really do have the makings of a ruthless businessperson inside that diminutive package.”
“Thanks, I think. So where were you?”
“At a bar.”
“At a bar?” I felt sick to my stomach. Was every marriage I admired on the brink of disaster? “With another woman?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“So why can’t Felicia know?”
“I’ve been in AA for years. We always had the plan to open an inn, but Felicia finally told me one day that she was not going to go down that road to her dream life with a guy too drunk to help. If I wanted it, I was going to have to clean up and stay that way. When I hit five years’ sobriety, we celebrated by purchasing this place.”
“So what were you doing at the bar?” I held my breath. I didn’t think I wanted him to answer. Five years’ sobriety before the inn purchase plus the six since they bought the place was a long time to toe the line. I’d hate to know he blew it.
“I was sitting in my car trying to talk myself out of going in to drown my sorrows and to forget all about Alanza.”
“Did you go in?” It wasn’t going to be good for his drinking or his promises to his wife, but if he had been spotted in the bar, it would at least give him an alibi for the time the syrup was being poisoned.
“I’m not proud I got so far as the parking lot, but I am proud to say I got no farther. I stayed in my truck deciding what to do until closing time.”
“So you were in the parking lot until around one a.m.?”
“I was. Then I dragged my sorry self home and snuck into bed next to Felicia and tossed and turned all night long.” At least that’s what he said he did. There were a few hours between then and the time the breakfast started to slip into the grange hall and poison the syrup. And like almost everyone else in town, Roland had a key to the place.
“Well, that explains why you looked so beat the next morning at the pancake breakfast.” At least, it could explain it.
“It explains my performance, too. I’m gonna beat your grandfather some year if it is the last thing I do.” Roland nodded his head like he needed convincing. Which everyone would. Grampa was a force of nature when it came to pancakes.
Eighteen
Since it was just next door to Roland and Felicia’s inn, I decided to poke around at Alanza’s property. It was silent when I pulled in and stepped out of the car. Even the birds and squirrels seemed to be giving the place a miss. I wasn’t sure if it was a sort of commentary on Alanza herself and the energy she had put forth while living there, or even the natural world’s commentary on storage facilities. The squat little office building for the storage facility was set back enough to obscure it from sight of passersby out on the road.
If someone was going to kill Alanza, I wondered why he or she decided to do it in such a public fashion. Why not just sneak out here and clunk her over the head in the middle of the night? Why would someone need to implicate my business in their beef with her? Was Alanza even the intended victim or was Greener Pastures? Maybe she was just someone easy to dispose of because of her unpopularity in the community. No one would miss her and she was doing her best to cause problems.
But what reason would anyone have to bother Greener Pastures? I didn’t think I had any enemies particularly, but maybe I was being shortsighted. Knowlton had been chasing me for so long, it was a town-wide joke. Maybe he was tired of being mocked and tired of being rejected. And Tansey wasn’t any too happy with me either. As far as she was concerned, I had missed the boat by passing up what her darling son had to offer. She also might have blamed me for another sugaring operation starting up in Sugar Grove.
I thought about Lowell and whether or not he had considered the possibility that killing Alanza with Greener Pastures syrup was much more deliberate than I had first thought. I would have asked him about it, but since I was avoiding him like I avoided people with the stomach flu, I couldn’t very well do that.
I rounded the corner of the building and spotted Jill Hayes pulling a box out of her jeep. In the bright clear light of day it was still possible to make out her bruising under a heavy cover of makeup. I called out to her and she dropped th
e box on the ground, spilling most of the contents.
“You scared me half to death.” Jill and I both squatted down at the same time to retrieve the scattered tree-tapping supplies, and we smacked heads. Now I was going to have a bruise.
“Sorry. I’m glad to see you out and about. Are you feeling better?”
“I was until you banged heads with me. What are you doing here?” I had to think fast. Then I thought of the perfect excuse.
“I lent Alanza a book about sugar making and I thought she might have left it here. I wanted to get it back before whoever inherits starts clearing out the place.”
“Good idea. Once that happens, you probably won’t see it again,” Jill said.
“So what brings you by?” Jill had no better reason to be there than I did.
“I was just checking on some of the equipment I had here for tapping the trees. You know how busy it gets during sugaring season.”
“It looks like you were bringing supplies in, not checking on what was already here.” I handed her a spile. She blushed and took it.
“I guess I don’t know if I’m coming or going lately.”
“That would explain the problem with your story about being at Hanley’s camp Friday night.”
“What do you mean?” Jill stood, the box forgotten on the ground.
“Knowlton says you weren’t with Hanley on Friday night like you said you were. He said no one was up there at all.”
“Knowlton is a fruitcake who talks to a stuffed woodchuck when he’s looking for some company.”
“He may be an eccentric but he doesn’t tend to lie.” Except for all that stuff he said about me and the contortionism to anyone in the world of taxidermy who would listen.
“What did Hanley say?” Jill gave me the same cornered but still fighting look my niece and nephew do when they’re trying to wriggle out of trouble and it isn’t looking good for them. Even though I hadn’t asked him about it yet after speaking with Knowlton, it was time to see what she thought of their relationship.
“What do you think he said?” I watched her shoulders sag and the brave leaked all out of her.
“I think he said I was with him at first and then he told you the truth the minute you applied any pressure.”
“Well, if he is willing to hit you, I don’t think the relationship is all that good, do you?”
“He didn’t hit me. I lied when you came to see me that day.”
“You aren’t going to tell me you walked into a door, are you?”
“It was someone else.” Jill started to speak then stopped herself.
“Did another man hit you? It wasn’t your brother, was it?” Suddenly I feared for Piper’s safety. She might do a lot of things that felt unsafe to me, but she had never put up with an abusive man and I didn’t want to even consider the possibility that she could start.
“It was Alanza.” Jill sagged against the wall as if the weight of her secret had thrust her off her feet.
“Alanza hit you? Why?” The idea of a physical altercation between grown women in a civilized town was so tacky it nauseated me. It had been hard enough to think about Hanley using his fists on Jill, but to credit the damage to another woman was hard to wrap my mind around.
“It was about the trees.”
“The trees?”
“Lewis Bett had allowed me to tap the trees here for years since my own property isn’t big enough to produce the amount of sap I need to run a thriving business.”
“How does that lead to Alanza giving you a black eye?”
“As soon as Alanza decided to go into the sugaring business herself, she didn’t want anyone else to tap her trees. I reminded her I had a long-standing arrangement with Lewis and that he had promised me when he died it would still stand. He wanted the property to go on being an asset to the community.”
“What did Alanza say to that?”
“She said a whole lot of things were going to change on the property and that the townspeople ought to get used to it. I wasn’t the only one who would be affected and I should grow up about it.” I could relate to that conversation. It sounded like Celadon had been taking interpersonal relationship lessons from Alanza.
“That sounds threatening.” And like a reason someone might decide to get rid of her before she did any more damage to his or her interest in the property. “But you still haven’t explained the black eye.”
“I shoved her. She was right in my face, shaking her finger at me and calling me names. I snapped and I put both hands on her chest and shoved her into one of the very trees she didn’t want me to tap anymore.” Jill started panting a little, like she was reliving the experience.
“And then?”
“And then she hauled off and decked me. She knocked me right off my feet. My eye started to swell shut and my ears were ringing. I’d never experienced anything like it.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Lowell was forever being called out to domestic incidents. As a matter of fact, in the annual town report the police log listed four times as many domestic disturbance calls as any other single category.
“I started it. She could have pressed charges against me, too. It was ugly and embarrassing. And I hoped it would all blow over. It wasn’t likely she would change her mind about me tapping the trees if I set the police on her.”
“Is that the real reason why you weren’t at the pancake breakfast?”
“I didn’t want to show up with my face all swollen and I certainly didn’t want to run into Alanza.” But was Jill telling the truth now? It sounded too far-fetched and embarrassing to be made up, but she had lied in the first place about Hanley hitting her.
“So this happened on Friday night when you told me you were with Hanley at his camp?”
“That’s right. I had been planning on going up with Hanley that night, but he said since Alanza had closed her property to use by off-road vehicles, it wasn’t worth it to go up.” So neither of them had an alibi for the night the syrup was poisoned. Where was he if he wasn’t with Jill or Connie and he wasn’t up at his camp? And was Jill so angry with Alanza, she went to the grange and poisoned the syrup to get back at her for the fight and to regain the use of the trees? She wasn’t actually around to see the death, which made her look all the more suspicious to me. As much as I hated the idea, I was going to have to talk to Hanley again and try to worm out of him what he was up to.
• • •
Hanley was standing over a fallen tree, cutting it into stove-length pieces, when I arrived home. Sawdust covered his lucky plaid shirt like snowfall. I wasn’t looking forward to asking Hanley where he really was on Friday night. Asking him while he was wielding a chain saw was even less appealing. But it had to be done. And besides, Grampa was in the nearby barn kitting out the reindeer in his herd with their seasonal bells. He’d be sure to come running if I started squawking.
Hanley noticed me standing nearby but made me wait fifteen minutes while he finished up. I would have given him grief about it, but I figured calling him a liar was going to be enough punishment. Once the sawdust finally stopped raining down, I stepped up to the task at hand without preamble.
“Jill says you weren’t with her on Friday night, and Connie mentioned you weren’t home either.” There, I’d said it and I lived to tell the story. I did keep one eye on Hanley and the other on the barn.
“You sure are a snoopy little thing, aren’t you?” Hanley used the chain saw like a pointer and gestured in my direction. I was so glad the thing was no longer running, I felt more emboldened than frightened.
“That’s why I’m asking you again where you were and I’m hoping you tell me the truth this time.”
“You’re not my wife. As long as I show up and do the work I say I’ll do, what’s it to you?”
“If my business goes under because it looks like I poisoned people with my syrup, I won’t have any more work for you to do. So I guess it’s more about what it means to you.”
“Syrup
making or not, this is still a tree farm, and unless I missed some sort of memo, your grandfather is still in charge of who works on it.” Hanley spat a big gob of something awful within an inch of my favorite work boots.
“Right you are. And my grandfather only hires people he wants to have around. He isn’t a fan of liars or men that cheat on their wives. I’d hate to have to disillusion him about you.” I batted my eyelashes at Hanley and shrugged. From the way he scowled at me and tossed a perfectly good chain saw on the ground like a toddler having a tantrum, I’d say we had come to an understanding.
“I was up at Alanza’s tinkering with my equipment.”
“What does that mean?”
“I was sabotaging my heavy machinery.”
“You were doing what?” How could that be? Sure, he had just mistreated his saw but generally Hanley was meticulous concerning his tools.
“Have you seen the clearing I’ve already done near the storage facility?”
“Yes. I saw it when I was up at Roland’s the other day. It looks ghastly.”
“So you know why I had to do a little damage that would stop the clearing up at Bett’s Knob but would still be easy to fix once I’d managed to get Alanza to change her mind.”
“Why did you sign on to do the work in the first place if you didn’t agree with it?”
“Alanza was one of my biggest clients, just like Lewis Bett before her. If I refused, she would have fired me and given the contract to someone else. With the economy being as bad as it is, I needed the business.” I could see that. At Greener Pastures we were still hiring Hanley whenever we needed him, but someone in different financial circumstances might look on forestry services as a luxury expense.
“If you were up there, did you see Jill and Alanza having a fight?” Maybe he and Jill could still give each other an alibi.
“I heard a bit of a ruckus, but it wasn’t like I was going to investigate. I didn’t want Alanza to know I was there.”
“What made you think you were going to be able to change Alanza’s mind about clearing Bett’s Knob?”
Drizzled with Death (A Sugar Grove Mystery) Page 19