Tapped Out: Maple Syrup Mysteries

by Emily James

  Anderson Taylor really had studied my dad.

  Part of my mind knew I’d focused on that element because I didn’t want to face the meat of his pronouncement.

  I’d taken on a client who was likely a liar and a murder, and willing to do anything to get away with it.

  4

  By the time the dogs and I returned to the house, I still felt like molten rocks were rolling around in my stomach. What had Elise gotten me into?

  I yanked my phone from my pocket. We need to talk without the kids around, I texted her.

  I’m heading to the park with the kids, she texted back almost immediately. We could talk privately while they play.

  She responded so quickly that it felt like she must have been waiting to hear more from me. She wasn’t going to like what I had to say.

  I made it to the park in ten minutes. I hadn’t had to ask Elise which one. I’d gone with Elise and the kids a couple of times already this summer. Tourists took their kids to the park by the lake with the giant, flashy splash pad and the children’s-sized rock climbing wall. Locals took their kids to the smaller, quieter park on the other side of town. It was filled with the more traditional swing sets, slides, and jungle gym.

  Elise’s kids weren’t the only ones on the playground equipment when I arrived, but Elise had chosen a bench on the opposite side of the equipment from the other parents. No one tended to sit on this side if there was free space on the other side because these benches were older and creaked like they might collapse underneath you when you sat.

  I eased carefully down next to Elise.

  She kept her eyes on the playground equipment like she was worried about one of the kids disappearing. “Did you and Dean come to an agreement?”

  She must have meant it to sound casual, but her slightly higher pitch gave her away.

  I angled on the bench as far as I could to face her. “His last lawyer quit because Dean asked him to tamper with the jury. That’s jail time and massive fines, Elise. Not only does this guy look guilty, but it puts my professional and personal life on the line if he tries to manipulate the jury on his own and I’m implicated in it.”

  My voice rose in volume unintentionally. Just saying what the repercussions could be made my stomach lurch.

  Elise went vampire-pale. “I didn’t know.”

  As much as my parents wanted me back practicing the law, I could almost hear my mom’s voice in my head telling me to drop this case. One paycheck wasn’t worth your entire career. Hopefully Elise would see logic and tell me it was okay to walk away from this, or she’d have some compelling reason she believed Dean was innocent and worth defending.

  “I never thought you did know,” I said. She needed to understand that I believed in her and her motives. Whatever they were, they had to be pure.

  “I still need your help.”

  Cross logic off the list. That left a compelling reason. “And I need a good reason to take the risk. What’s going on? Who is this guy to you?”

  She pressed two fingers into the space between her eyes. “My ex-husband.”

  The words were almost inaudible, but they stung like a slap.

  While Elise was pregnant with her five-year-old, Cameron, her husband was out at strip clubs and eventually ran off with one of the dancers. They divorced when Cameron was only a few months old. Elise had full custody, and her ex had visitation rights. His name was never mentioned among the Cavanaughs. The only reason Elise hadn’t gone back to her maiden name was because she wanted to keep the same last name as her children.

  A few years later, her ex-husband re-married. No one had mentioned whether it was the dancer he left Elise for or if he’d found someone else. Not that it really mattered. Whoever he’d married was dead now, and he was no less a jerk.

  I planted my elbows on my knees and buried my face in my hands. “You should have told me from the start. The whole Cavanaugh family is going to hate me for even considering defending him. Why do you even want me to?”

  “Aunt Nikki!” Arielle called from somewhere in front of me. “Watch me slide!”

  I lifted my head and waved at her so she’d know I was paying attention. She sprinted to the ladder, scurried up, and went down with her arms in the air.

  Once she hit the ground, I glanced at Elise. She wore a translucent smile.

  “They’re why. All last year, Arielle came home from school crying at least once a week because she had a girl in her class who teased her about not having a dad. And Cameron counts down the days when he knows his dad’s going to visit. What’ll it do to them if Dean goes to prison? They shouldn’t suffer because I picked a crappy dad for them.”

  I knew the effect a child’s relationship with their father—and their father’s reputation—could have on them well into adulthood. Maybe better than anyone, I understood.

  But if he’d done what he was accused of, he deserved to go to prison. “If he’s guilty—”

  “I know.” She ran both hands over her hair. “I know you won’t defend him if he really did this. You shouldn’t. I don’t want the kids around a murderer, either. But I don’t think he did.”

  She had no idea how much I wanted that to be true. I wanted it to be true almost as much as I believed it wasn’t. “I haven’t seen the evidence yet, but from what Dean told me, this would be a hard one for anyone to win, even my parents.”

  “What’s his motive?” Elise asked. For a second, she sounded like a police officer again, rather than like a woman under too much stress.

  If it made her feel better, we’d play it like two professionals running down a case, as if this wasn’t personal and important. “A lot of cases where one spouse kills another are domestic violence taken to the extreme.”

  “Exactly.” Elise’s posture straightened. “Dean’s not violent. Even during our worst fights, he never so much as threatened to hit me.”

  “That might have been because you’re a cop. He knew you could defend yourself, and he knew you wouldn’t let him get away with it.”

  “We could easily prove I wasn’t the exception by calling his other girlfriends as witnesses.”

  I let the we slide for now. I’d brainstorm with Elise right now because I needed to decide if I took this case or not. If I did, she’d need to back off and let me handle it. She couldn’t put her career in further jeopardy.

  I made a mental note to ask Dean for the names of his previous girlfriends.

  Elise’s lips drew into an I’m right, and I’m not backing down line. “Once we can show that he wasn’t the kind of man who beat his partners, the prosecution doesn’t have motive. He’s already shown he has no problem leaving wives if he wants out. He didn’t have to kill her for that reason, either.”

  “No prenup that you know of?”

  “No money that I know of. Sandra worked at a gas station, and Dean hasn’t been consistent about helping with the kids’ expenses. He’s been better the past year, but he hasn’t made extravagant purchases for them or anything.”

  That didn’t match with Dean’s nonchalance about paying me. Of course, based on what I knew now, he probably planned to never pay me.

  I’d still want to check that Sandra wasn’t some sort of closet heiress. Or that they hadn’t come into any money post-marriage through a lottery win or gambling. Depending on how much cash a windfall like that garnered them, he might have been willing to kill to keep all of it rather than lose half in a divorce. The prosecution would have already subpoenaed their bank records, though, so all of that should be in the discovery package.

  Arielle and Cameron were coming across the grass toward us, looking like they were both ready for a nap.

  “Please,” Elise said quietly. “For them. They love their dad, and for how much of a crappy husband he was, he loves them, too.”

  I bit back a sigh. Maybe my parents were right. Maybe I did have Easy Mark tattooed on my forehead. Though they seemed to think that less these days than they had in the past. Recently, they’d sho
wn more confidence in me. I needed to have confidence in myself too. I had to trust that I could make good decisions, and that I could find a way to rectify things if I made a bad one.

  “I’ll look into the bank records and talk to a couple of his previous girlfriends. If I come up empty on a motive, then I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s innocent, and I’ll take the case.”

  5

  The material Anderson couriered to me arrived the next morning, before I’d finished my first cup of coffee. If he was this on top of everything, he might manage to become the northern version of my dad.

  I ripped open the package. It included the prosecution’s evidence against Dean and a list of former girlfriends, which made me think he’d been building a defense against domestic violence as well.

  I’d put in a call to the prosecutor’s office after my talk with Elise, and they were sending me a discovery package anyway, but having Anderson’s copy would help me get started right away.

  He’d attached a handwritten note. If there’s anything else I can do, give me a call.

  The number underneath had to be his cell. It didn’t match the number I’d called yesterday.

  I put the number into my phone and texted him a thank you.

  Just as I hit Send, a text came in from Russ. Hope you remember our meeting this afternoon.

  I rubbed my temples and glanced over at the coffee pot. I usually limited myself to two cups in the morning, but today might end up being a three-cup kind of day. My to-do list had already been long between following up on Dean’s case and planning Stacey’s rapidly approaching baby shower. I hadn’t forgotten the meeting with Russ as much as I hadn’t wanted to remember. Discussing orders and purchases and the health of the maple bush was better than sleeping pills.

  Can we postpone? I texted back.

  Really need to discuss Stacey, he wrote.

  I rubbed my eyes, but I hadn’t misread his message. What did we need to discuss about Stacey? As far as I knew, she’d been working miracles with our accounting and organization. Hopefully Russ simply wanted to figure out what we were going to do when she needed time off after her baby was born. I might melt down if he wanted to fire her. All the work she’d been doing would land back on my desk.

  Or what if Stacey had told him she didn’t want to stay after her baby was born? Originally she’d asked for a job at Sugarwood because she didn’t want to work around the fumes at her dad’s car repair shop while she was pregnant. She might have handed in her resignation now that fumes soon wouldn’t be a problem.

  The knot that formed in my throat was so big I couldn’t even swallow a sip of coffee around it. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate as well as I should on Dean’s case if I was wondering what Russ needed to say regarding Stacey.

  I punched half his number into my phone. It rang before I could finish.

  I hit the Answer icon. “Russ?”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” Anderson’s voice said from my phone. “Is Russ your boyfriend?”

  It wouldn’t be the largest age gap between a couple, but the thought of dating Russ was about as appealing as the thought of kissing my cousin. If I had a cousin. Besides, I wouldn’t have traded Mark for anyone, not even Russ.

  I grinned even though Anderson couldn’t see me. “Russ is my business partner.”

  “Am I interrupting something, then? It sounded like you were expecting a call from him.”

  I definitely didn’t want to go into complicated Sugarwood business with a near stranger. “Nothing that can’t wait.”

  “Good.” His voice sounded like he was smiling as well. “I thought I’d call to make sure you got all the material I sent.”

  “I texted you. I guess it didn’t go through. It wouldn’t be the first time. I live in Fair Haven. It’d be easier to find the Holy Grail than a stable cell phone signal here.”

  Anderson chuckled. “I’ll remember that. Did you want me to walk you through the high points?”

  The quicker I got up to speed, the better. “Please.”

  “Based on the grocery store receipt in the bag on the kitchen counter, they know the victim was still alive at 9:00 pm.”

  I flipped past the first few pages of written material until I came to the crime scene photos. The bag lying on the counter was the reusable kind. “They confirmed with the clerk that she was the one buying the groceries, not Dean?”

  “Yup. The night clerk ID’d her from a photo, and she’d left food out on the counter that spoiled by the time the police arrived in the morning. It couldn’t have been out any longer or someone would have thrown it away. The receipt in the bag also came from the same store that the bag used to suffocate her was from, and the items on it matched the ones out on the counter.”

  Those photos would be further back, but I didn’t need to see them at the moment. The last thing my pride needed was to get woozy while talking to another lawyer.

  Something niggled at the back of my mind. “She was suffocated with a plastic bag?”

  “The photos should be in there.”

  “I see them now,” I lied. “Most people either use all plastic or all reusable. It’s strange to mix and match, so where’d the plastic bag come from?”

  “It might have been from a different trip, or she could have purchased too much to fit in the reusable bags she brought. But that’s a nice start to reasonable doubt.”

  There was real admiration in his voice. He was probably thinking about how I took after my dad. In laying the groundwork, maybe I did. I’d always been good at putting the puzzle pieces together. It was in the courtroom where it all fell apart.

  I turned to another photo. It was of a beige carpet with mud stains that looked like they might be footprints across it. Because of the way they were smeared, it’d be impossible for the police to have gotten a boot print or even a shoe size from them. “Did they test the dirt on the bedroom carpet yet?”

  “They did, and they took samples from the boots Dean still had on when they brought him in, and from the other sets in the closet. The results were inconclusive. There wasn’t anything special in the mud, so it could have come from him or anyone else who walked through their neighborhood. Which, of course, would be anyone who entered their house.”

  I grabbed a pen and jotted notes. “Did you look into the weather that day?”

  “Rain until late evening.”

  Mud dried fairly quickly, so whoever had killed her hadn’t been in the house long before it happened. “Anything else I should know heading in?”

  “Like I said, I really hadn’t gotten far. I got a list of Dean’s former lovers to try to establish that he wasn’t violent with his romantic partners the way the prosecution wants to claim, but I’d only spoken to one so far. My notes are in there, but she said he never hurt her.”

  A strange knot formed in my chest. Elise might be right about Dean’s innocence after all. “I talked to his ex-wife already, and she said the same.”

  I glanced through the other photos, but it seemed like we had all the key points except for one. “Dean said the person who killed his wife duct taped the bag on. Did they find the rest of the roll of duct tape?”

  “No, but if I were the prosecution, I’d argue that he had time to get rid of it. According to the medical examiner’s report, the latest her TOD window could stretch was 2:00 am, and that’s a long shot. They figure it was closer to 11:00 pm, shortly after she arrived home.”

  If that was the case, why did Dean leave her body in the bedroom rather than disposing of her along with the duct tape while it was still dark out? “Who called it in?”

  “Her sister. She got worried when Sandra wasn’t answering her cell the next morning, and she came over. She says she walked past Dean, asleep on the couch, and found her sister’s body in the bedroom. She assumed he’d done it, locked the bedroom door, and called the police.”

  I added Sandra’s sister to the list of people I needed to talk to, along with Dean’s former romantic par
tners.

  Stress pooled above my eyes, and I kneaded my fingers into the spot. Dean’s lack of a violent past and the missing duct tape alone wouldn’t be enough to create reasonable doubt for a jury, but they were for me because of what was at stake for Arielle and Cameron.

  “Thanks for bringing me up to speed,” I said.

  “Call me any time,” Anderson said. “It’s fun working with a Fitzhenry-Dawes.”

  I couldn’t help myself. The little imp inside me grabbed hold of the reins controlling my mouth. “My dad’s not always right, you know. As excellent a lawyer as he is, sometimes people are innocent.”

  “Yeah, sometimes they are.” There was a short pause. “But the guilty ones usually pay better.”

  I was still laughing as we disconnected. It died quickly.

  My next step in the case would be visiting the murder scene myself to see if I could poke any more holes in the case. But first, I needed to talk to Russ “about Stacey.”

  6

  “Please tell me you don’t want to fire Stacey,” I blurted as soon as I was through the door of Russ’ office.

  His caterpillar like eyebrows drew down over his eyes. “Why would I want to fire Stacey?”

  I flopped into the chair across from him. “Then is she wanting to quit after the baby’s born?”

  Russ slowly shook his head. “This is why I tell you not to listen to the rumor mill. It never does no one no good.”

  I hadn’t realized people had been suggesting the same things as I’d been thinking, but it didn’t surprise me. “Those ideas are all mine. I started to worry when you said we needed to talk about Stacey.”

  Russ brought a hand up to his head and ruffled his thinning hair. My heart tried to scramble up into my throat.

  He hadn’t called me here to talk about either of those things, but he was still nervous about something. Maybe Stacey needed a raise now that she’d be a single mom. That wouldn’t be so bad. We could afford to raise her salary.

  “It’s not even so much about Stacey as it is about you and me and Sugarwood,” Russ said.