End of the Line_Maple Syrup Mysteries

by Emily James

  Of course, knowing how to do it and being able to do it were two entirely different things.

  I worked at the lock for long enough that my nose started to run and my lips felt dry and ready to crack. I stopped long enough to blow my nose.

  One more try and I’d have to give up.

  The lock popped open. Thank goodness. At least I’d be able to get out of the wind, and once I was inside, I’d use my cell phone light to search.

  I tugged the door open and hopped up the stairs. I drew the door closed behind me, shutting out most of the moonlight and blinding me in darkness until my eyes adjusted.

  And I wasn’t cold anymore.

  The inside of the truck was much too warm.

  A cold line of metal that had to be a knife pressed against my neck in the same spot where Troy had his throat slit.

  “I was hoping I was wrong about you,” Isabel’s voice said out of the darkness. “How much do you know?”

  14

  A searing pain formed in my chest where my collarbones met, and my own heartbeat filled my ears.

  I’d been an idiot. I missed the signs. The way Isabel always had me come to her truck. The way she always parked her truck in isolated locations. The little camping heater she always seemed to have set up.

  Isabel—or whatever her name really was—lived in her truck. It wouldn’t have mattered when I tried to break in. She would have caught me no matter what.

  And now I was very likely going to die, my neck slit just like Troy’s. Because there was no other reason for her to be holding a knife to my neck than that she played a role in what happened and she knew I’d figured it out. Most people would call the police if they thought someone was attempting to break into their home or the vehicle. They wouldn’t lie in wait to ambush them.

  At least if I vanished tonight, Mark couldn’t be blamed for it. He was still in a cell at the Fair Haven police station, and he wouldn’t be released until at least tomorrow.

  Focus, Nicole. You’re panicking again.

  I had to stall. I had to stall until my eyes adjusted. Then she’d have one less advantage, and maybe I could still figure a way out of this.

  She’d asked me a question. What had she asked me? Something about what I knew? “Know about what?”

  Great. That sounded bright and not at all fake. But I needed to get her talking, and I wasn’t about to tell her what little I’d figured out about this case. Given I was here, she probably wouldn’t believe me if I did anyway. It must look like I knew a lot more than I did.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, okay? I just need to know how much you’ve told him.”

  Told Mark? Or did she mean Anderson? There couldn’t be another him who mattered in this case.

  The knife stayed perfectly still on my neck, which was a bit odd. I’d have expected her to add to the threat by increasing the pressure.

  My heartbeat slowed enough that I could hear other sounds. Like Isabel’s ragged breathing, almost like she was afraid.

  It didn’t make sense for her to be afraid, though. I was a lot less threatening than the men she’d already faced and bested, and what I knew wouldn’t matter once she killed me. Maybe she was afraid that killing me wouldn’t be the end of it. That must be it. She wanted to know how much I’d told Anderson so she knew whether she could get away with killing only me or if she’d have to go after him next as well.

  Unfortunately, the only good response was the truth. I’d brought this on myself by stupidly coming here alone. Anderson didn’t deserve to die because I’d let my desperation to save Mark cloud my normally sound judgment—though in my defense, I had expected her to be sleeping somewhere else. What kind of a crazy person slept in their vehicle during a record-cold Michigan winter anyway?

  The fact that her housing choices entered my mind at all let me know I needed to pull my mind back on track again because it was trying hard to slide back into the panic circle.

  “I haven’t told him anything,” I said.

  “I haven’t stayed alive this long by being stupid. He’d demand results, which means you’ve had to give him something.”

  The knife blade broke contact with my skin and interior lights flared on. My eyes instinctively squinted at the change. The knife landed back on my neck.

  My mind felt like it split, with half still focused on the blade at my throat and the other half working to make sense of Isabel’s words.

  Anderson wasn’t my boss. He couldn’t demand results from me. In fact, in this case he was almost working for me, since Mark was my fiancé. Isabel might not realize all of that, though. I couldn’t remember exactly, but I didn’t think I’d explained my strange job situation to her. It’d make sense to assume that since I also worked at Sugarwood, I wasn’t a full partner in Anderson’s firm, but rather an employee who’d have to justify her time spent by producing results.

  The only thing I could think to do was tell her that and pray she’d believe me. I didn’t even have a way to warn Anderson that danger was headed his way. “We’re partners. I don’t have to report to him.”

  The corners of Isabel’s eyes tightened, and a tiny line appeared between her eyebrows. “He doesn’t have partners. He has people he can control.”

  She rolled her lips together in a way that made me think she was trying not to cry.

  “Please.” She pulled the knife back slightly. “Just tell me if he knows this name and about my truck, and I’ll let you go.”

  Wait, what? This name, not her real name? She should expect Anderson would know the alias she was using. And Anderson wasn’t some sort of domineering man. Even my dad partnered with my mom, and my dad was his role model.

  Something about this conversation wasn’t right. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing. Who are you talking about?”

  The tip of the knife wobbled, as if she couldn’t decide whether to raise it back up to my neck or set it down permanently. “My husband.”

  Her tone carried enough hesitation to let me know that she still wasn’t convinced whether I was playing her or not.

  If Isabel took on an alias to hide from her husband, then she might be innocent of everything I’d been investigating. That meant the knife in her hand was more like a dog who was showing its teeth and growling out of fear.

  I had to show her I wasn’t a threat. “As far as I know, I’ve never met your husband. He didn’t send me to find you.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  My face suddenly felt like I’d leaned too close to a fire. I was going to sound awfully stupid telling a woman trying to hide from her husband that I thought her guilty of murdering one police officer and kidnapping another.

  All her actions made sense in light of a potentially abusive husband chasing her. The fake name. No permanent address. Even how she made sure to lock the door. It probably had nothing to do with the old lock and everything to do with her fear that he’d catch her and she wouldn’t see him coming.

  But I had the feeling she’d know if I was lying to her about my real reason for coming. That would lead her to assume I was lying about not knowing her husband. I’d have to admit to the truth, embarrassing or not.

  “Your behavior was suspicious, and I thought you might be involved with the case involving my fiancé.” I spit the words out quickly and quietly. “I was trying to find out your real name so that I could see if you were connected to any of the cases he’d worked.”

  Isabel laid the knife down on the counter behind her, but she placed it well out of my reach, as if to say I’m willing to believe you, but I’m not willing to take any chances, just in case.

  I could accept that. I would have done the same thing, and all I really cared about was that there wasn’t a knife pointed at me anymore.

  She clutched the edge of the counter with one hand. “I wasn’t involved in killing anyone or kidnapping anyone.”

  The way she said it and her specific choice of wording set off my the-witness-is-withholding-inform
ation warning signals again, but I was starting to think that was simply Isabel’s way. From what I knew of abusive relationships, the victim usually learned early on to hold in their thoughts and emotions, especially if any of them might set off their abuser. That tendency wasn’t something Isabel would be able to shut off around other people if it was a skill she’d worked hard on for years.

  We continued to stare at each other. Any other time, staring into the eyes of another woman standing this close to me would have felt weird and intrusive. Right now, it was more like neither of us trusted the other quite enough to look away.

  “How can I be sure you’re telling the truth?” she finally asked. “If I let you leave here, and you’re lying to me, he’ll know about my truck, and he’ll eventually find me. He’ll kill me when that happens.”

  I heard what she didn’t say. That if I was lying to her, I’d be a party to murder. It was smart of her not to state it explicitly. Had I been lying, the implication would have had more impact than a blunt statement ever could have.

  Thankfully, I was telling the truth.

  Now I needed to convince her of it. Not only because I didn’t want her to be afraid and have to flee, but also because she was much too talented a baker to give up her truck. If her husband knew about her cupcake truck, she wouldn’t just need to change her name or change the name of her business. She’d have to abandon it entirely and start over in a new career, probably one completely outside of the food industry. She couldn’t risk leaving any trail for him to follow if she wanted to survive.

  “I’m a criminal lawyer, not a private investigator. I only represent clients who are innocent. My fiancé is the county medical examiner, and two of my closest friends here are police officers. I try to work with the good guys.”

  Isabel rubbed her hand along her neck like she was having trouble swallowing or breathing. Maybe both. “The good guys.”

  The way she echoed my words made me feel like I was missing something again.

  She tried to step backward and bumped into the counter. “Your association with the police is one of the reasons I was afraid you were helping my husband. The police aren’t always the good guys.”

  The sadness in her voice made my throat ache.

  Her husband couldn’t be…but there wasn’t any other option that made sense. Her husband was either a law enforcement officer or he worked with them.

  I wanted to defend the police. Most police officers were the good guys. Most of them wanted to protect the innocent and serve their community. They were willing to put their own lives in danger to do so. They worked long hours and faced a lot of stress and situations that would break the average person.

  But even I couldn’t argue they were all good. Look at former Chief Wilson and Chief McTavish’s ongoing corruption investigation.

  Oh no. My vision went fuzzy, and I felt a bit like I might throw up.

  How could I have missed it? There was one other case, if you could call it that, that Mark, Troy, and Chief McTavish might have had in common—the ongoing investigation into corruption within the Fair Haven PD.

  I forced myself to take a few deep breaths, and my vision slowly cleared. Isabel gave me a look that said she didn’t know whether to get me a paper bag to breathe in to or tie me up and drop me somewhere so she could make her escape.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Not all police are the good guys, and I think I just figured out why an officer I knew was murdered and my fiancé was framed for it.”

  15

  Sit down over there”—Isabel pointed at a thick pile of blankets that had to be her bed—“before you fall over.”

  I obeyed because at least she wasn’t pointing a knife at me anymore, and it wasn’t like I could do anything about what I’d figured out, considering it was the middle of the night. “Does this mean you believe me that your husband didn’t send me?”

  “It means that if you crack your head on my counter, I’ll have to call 911, and there’ll be no way my husband won’t find me then.” I thought I caught a hint of a smile.

  Isabel put a pot onto a burner, spooned in sugar and cocoa powder, and added milk.

  I’d broken into her truck in the middle of the night, thinking she was a murderer, and she was making me homemade cocoa. She was either the nicest person I’d ever met or she’d spent so much time trying to soothe an abuser that she couldn’t break the caregiver habit. It might be a bit of both.

  Truth was, I didn’t care why she was doing it. It felt like what I imagined it would have been like if I had an older sister. I would have sneaked into her room late at night and talked through my problems with her in the way that I never could with my parents.

  She handed me a mug and settled in next to me. She tented her knees up and rested her mug on top in a way that said she expected to have me tell her what was going on.

  I explained my theory. “Now I don’t know what to do. Normally, if I thought I’d found something relating to the corruption investigation, I’d take it to Chief McTavish.”

  Isabel wrapped her hands around her mug. Given the warmth in the truck, it couldn’t be because her fingers were cold. Whatever she planned to say must make her uncomfortable.

  “You can’t go to the police,” she said. “Whoever’s behind this made sure of that.”

  My first reaction was to say that was her natural distrust of the police talking, but she was right. By implicating Mark in Troy’s murder and making Chief McTavish vanish, they’d ensured I didn’t have an official channel to turn to. It was brilliant, really. They’d cast blame and protected themselves all at the same time.

  The only people left in the Fair Haven police department were strangers who wouldn’t believe me because they thought I might have aided and abetted Mark, and officers we couldn’t trust because they might be part of the web of corruption.

  I took a long, slow sip of the hot cocoa. It coated my tongue in chocolate sweetness in a way that hot chocolate from a package couldn’t, and the warmth spread far beyond my stomach. It might feel a bit hopeless right now, but I wasn’t completely alone. “I guess the place to start is to figure out if there’s anyone we can trust.”

  Isabel glanced at me sidelong. “That’s always the place to start.”

  I’d have told her she could trust me if I thought it’d make any difference, but I got the impression that she placed more weight on actions than on words.

  “Is there anyone other than your missing chief who would know who he’d already cleared and who he suspected?” Isabel asked.

  Mark might, but it wasn’t likely. He’d told me Chief McTavish wanted to keep him in the dark about his conclusions so that Mark could approach the files and old autopsies McTavish handed him without bias. I knew McTavish—at least early on—hadn’t confided in Erik. Because Erik was second-in-command after former Chief Wilson, he’d been one of the primary suspects initially.

  I shook my head.

  Isabel swirled her mug around like she was thinking, but it could simply be that she was trying to mix any sugar and cocoa powder that’d separated from the milk back together. My brain was still working overtime trying to figure her out.

  “I wish there was something more I could do to help.” Her voice had a tone that begged me to understand everything she wanted to say but couldn’t. “But I can’t be around the police.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not like you could find out something I couldn’t anyway.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it again, and got to her feet. She drained her cup and placed it in the sink. “Are you feeling steady enough to drive now?”

  I had to be. I couldn’t continue to camp out on the floor of Isabel’s food truck all night. I should get some sleep. Mark would be out on bail tomorrow. He could write down all the cases he remembered that he’d flagged as suspicious for Chief McTavish. Maybe if we pooled our brains with Elise, Erik, and Anderson, we could spot a link between them.

  It was a long shot. If it were an obvious link, Ch
ief McTavish would have closed the case long ago. But it was what we could do, and Elise and Mark had the advantage of having grown up in Fair Haven. That alone might provide them with the missing link when they looked at it all together.

  I handed my mug up to Isabel and got to my feet, trying not to step on her bed.

  I glanced down at the rumpled bedding. I had enough troubles of my own to worry about, but I couldn’t simply walk away and leave her here. “I have big dogs.”

  Isabel gave me a look that said that before she’d had it beaten out of her—by life, her husband, or both—she’d had a strong sense of humor and the ability to see the absurdity around her and laugh. “Good for you.”

  That wasn’t quite the clear invitation I’d intended it to be. In my defense, I wasn’t a night owl. My normal bedtime was hours ago. “What I mean is that you’d be safer staying with me than staying here. My dogs are a great early warning system.”

  “I don’t really sleep anyway. I heard your car as soon as you pulled up, and I was already watching you before you ever stepped out.” Isabel slowly rinsed out her mug, then mine, and set them upside down on a dish cloth to dry. “Besides, I can’t put you in that kind of danger. My husband…”

  Her gaze shifted to the side, and for an irrational second, I thought she spotted him out the window. She might get more sleep staying with me, but it seemed like I might not. That didn’t mean I was going to retract my offer, though. I couldn’t leave her living in her truck when I had a perfectly good guest room.

  Her gaze came back to my face and she licked her lips. “Was Chief McTavish married?”

  I nodded.

  “My husband would sometimes tell me things he probably shouldn’t have. Chief McTavish might have said something about the corruption investigation to his wife.”

  The next morning, on my drive to the McTavish home, my yawns were so large they could be considered distracted driving.

  I’d been right about getting less sleep than Isabel if she came to my house. It’d taken me another fifteen minutes of convincing after her suggestion that I talk to Mrs. McTavish, but I’d finally won out when I told her we could park her truck back in my sugar bush. Even if her husband somehow knew about her truck, he’d never see it there, and most cupcake decorators didn’t live with their clients. My house was probably the last place he’d think to look.