Tapped Out: Maple Syrup Mysteries

by Emily James

  Mark hoisted the garbage container upright, and I gathered the plants. Dean had dropped only an armful, but it destroyed the curb appeal of the house. Now more than ever, Dean would need that money. Whether he lived or died, there’d be medical bills. I’d always hated that part of our medical system. It felt cruel to present someone whose loved one had died with a bill as well.

  Tingling spread through my palms. I dumped the plants into the garbage bin, and shook my hands out. The sensation was disconcerting, like my hands had gone to sleep.

  Mark closed the lid, then frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  My skin didn’t look any different, but the sensation wasn’t going away. “I think I’m having an allergic reaction to the plants.”

  He drew my hand toward him, touching only the back, not the palm. “I don’t see a rash. What kind of plant is it?”

  The lady who toured the yard with the real estate agent had called it something with a hood. “Monkshood, I think. Dean was cleaning it up because one of the people who toured the house was complaining it wasn’t safe if their kids or dogs ate it. I thought it’d hurt the house’s perceived value if he didn’t get rid of it.”

  Mark tensed. “Is it just in your hands? Or are you having trouble breathing or a strange feeling in your chest?”

  I hadn’t been until he said that. “Only my hands. Why?”

  “You’re not allergic. Monkshood is aconite. It’s poisonous, and not only if you eat it.”

  26

  I felt like I was tumbling down a hole even though I hadn’t moved. I’d survived multiple attacks from killers. Was I going to die because I picked up a plant? “How poisonous?”

  “Fatal, depending on the dose.” Mark took my elbow and led me toward the outdoor hose. I seemed incapable of making the decision to move on my own. “If you’re only feeling it in your hands, you’re going to be okay, but I want us to go to the hospital just in case. First we’re going to rise as much of the sap off your hands as we can.”

  I nodded dumbly. “Touching the plant can poison someone? Can it kill them?”

  “You didn’t handle enough of it.” Mark turned the hose on. “You’re going to be okay. I promise.”

  His calm tone of voice let me know he wasn’t simply humoring me, but the tingling in my hands suddenly felt accusatory. “I’m not thinking about me anymore. I think I’m the one who sent Dean to the hospital. I told him to dig up those plants. Could that be what caused him to collapse?”

  He checked the water temperature with a finger, then aimed the flow over my outstretched palms. “It’s possible. The highest concentration of the toxin is in the roots. Yesterday was hot, so his pours would have been open. If he was chopping them out and carrying broken roots and stalks in his bare hands, he could have absorbed enough into his body.”

  Great. I’d almost killed Arielle and Cameron’s dad. I might have killed him. We didn’t know yet if he’d regain consciousness or what neurological damage there might be when he did.

  Mark glanced sidelong at me as if he could read my thoughts. “That doesn’t make it your fault. Most people don’t realize aconite doesn’t have to be ingested to be dangerous. Even people who garden. You said even the woman who toured the house and recognized it only mentioned eating it.” He moved the spray back and forth. “Besides, Dean would have had to be an idiot and ignore the feeling in his hands. Or, more likely, the loss of feeling.”

  I could believe that of Dean. He hadn’t shown the greatest judgment in anything he’d done since I met him, except for annulling his partnership with Griffin and agreeing to sell his house. This time, it might not have been complete poor judgment, though. “He probably thought it was an allergy the way I did, or that he was bitten by ants or grabbed a stinging nettle up with them or something.”

  “Either way, I’ll let his doctor know. We might not be able to prove it. Without checking, I’m not sure how long aconitum alkaloids stay in the blood stream.” Mark turned off the tap. “At least we know it’s not likely someone intentionally tried to kill him. Sandra’s killer is still out there, but since Dean’s condition was an accident, you’re safe, and so are Elise and the kids and Sandra’s family. It turns her death back into an isolated case rather than a vendetta.”

  I stopped in the middle of shaking the water off my hands. Oh crap. Was it possible…? The sick feeling in my stomach told me it was. “Unless someone did intentionally try to kill him and it backfired.”

  Mark took my elbow again and moved toward the car. “That’s not likely. We know he was digging out the monkshood. We could probably find out from the paramedics if his hands were bare when they arrived.”

  I followed along with Mark mechanically. I was sure Dean’s hands were bare. It wasn’t this time I was thinking of, but all the pieces were still trying to slide into place in my mind to confirm that I wasn’t jumping to crazy conclusions. “I think Sandra’s death wasn’t a murder at all. It was an attempted murder that got her killed.”

  Mark’s eyebrows lowered and he glanced at the garbage bin. One purplish-blue monkshood stalk stuck out of the lid. “You don’t think…”

  I did think. “Sandra didn’t tell Nadine or Ken that she was leaving Dean. Everyone, including me, assumed that’s what she meant. But what she said was that she’d decided what she needed to do. The meal she was preparing was for Dean. She planned to poison him and use the life insurance and money he’d collected from his business to save Nadine and Sam’s garden center. Once Dean was gone, she could marry Ken without a messy divorce.”

  That sounded like conjecture. I could tell by the look on Mark’s face, one eyebrow raised a touch above the other, that he wasn’t convinced.

  “Humor me?” I asked.

  “Talk it through.” His tone of voice said whatever it takes to keep your mind off your poison-hands.

  “Assume I’m right. That means the meal Sandra started preparing that night was meant for Dean.” How had I missed it? I’d been distracted from Ken’s conversation with the waitress by Stacey going into labor or I would have realized then that the meal couldn’t have been for him. “Yesterday Ken turned down the strawberry-peach cobbler because he’s allergic to strawberries. Sandra was making strawberry shortcake.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know.”

  He had a point. I wriggled my phone out and tap texted Elise What was Dean’s favorite meal and dessert? From what everyone had told me about Sandra, I could see her wanting to make Dean’s last meal a good one, as weird as that was. Dean had originally planned to be home for a late supper that night before he got caught up with Griffin.

  Steak, potatoes, and strawberry shortcake, Elise texted back.

  I read it out to Mark and tried—unsuccessfully—to keep any gloating out of my voice. “Sandra started preparing the meal, and then went out to cut flowers in the garden.”

  “She might have simply wanted flowers on the table. We’re guessing based on what she bought and how much she spent on it that she wanted the meal to be a nice one.”

  I wanted to stick out my tongue at him, but I know he was only trying to prepare me for what any law enforcement officer would say. “That’s possible too, but she worked at a garden center. She wouldn’t have cut monkshood for her table. Besides, most people wouldn’t go out in the rain. She was at the store. It’d been raining all day. She could have bought a bouquet of flowers rather than going out into the mud and rain to cut them. She’d spent enough on the food that a few extra dollars for flowers wouldn’t have mattered.”

  Holy crap! The mud!

  “When she started chopping the monkshood up, she absorbed enough to poison her. Maybe she even cut her finger and it went directly into her bloodstream. She wasn’t feeling well, she might not have even been thinking straight, and she went upstairs to lie down. That’s why she was on her bed fully dressed and why there was only one set of footprints. There wasn’t anyone else. Those muddy, dragging footprints belonged to Sandra as she stumbled into bed. How much acon
ite would someone have to eat for it to be fatal?”

  “Not much. A gram. She could have easily hidden that much in a well-prepared meal without Dean noticing. She had purchased a lot of fresh herbs.” The skepticism was gone from his voice. “If she poisoned herself accidentally, that would explain why it seemed like she suffocated face-down. One of the side effects of aconite poisoning is paralysis. If she dropped onto her bed face first, her own weight, combined with the additional difficulty breathing that aconite causes, could have smothered her. Aconite isn’t one of the substances tested for on a traditional tox screen, either.” He shook his head. “But she couldn’t have wrapped a plastic bag around her own head.”

  My throat constricted. I was pretty sure I knew how the bag had gotten there. And that it’d been an act of love rather than an act of hate, by someone who was as devoted to her as she’d been to them.

  27

  “If I’m not going to die from this, can we make a detour before the hospital?” I asked. “I need to talk to Sandra’s sister, Nadine.”

  “As long as we go to the hospital afterward, and you promise to do what the doctor says.”

  I did an air cross of my heart.

  He opened the car door for me and buckled me in so I didn’t have to use my sore hands. They felt a bit better already after the flush with the garden hose.

  The garden center wasn’t as busy on a Sunday afternoon as it had been the other times I’d been there. Nadine was the one at the cash register, but she was staring off into space. There weren’t any customers waiting.

  We walked up to the table, and she jerked slightly. She rose slowly to her feet.

  I’d been wondering all the way here how to get her to admit what she’d done. She’d worked so hard to hide it up to now.

  My one idea for how to do it seemed cruel, but it was the lesser of two evils over wasting police resources as they hunted for a killer that didn’t exist or sent an innocent person to prison. If Chief McTavish was wrong and they dismissed the charges against Dean, Ken would likely be their next person of interest thanks to his relationship with Sandra.

  I tucked my hands behind my back to keep from holding them strangely and making her suspicious. “I wanted you to hear it from me first. Dean has an alibi, and the police think Ken is the one who really killed Sandra.”

  Nadine sank into her chair. “Have they arrested him?”

  “The prosecution doesn’t think they can make the charge stick because Ken shops at a different grocery store. His lawyer is saying he wouldn’t have had a bag that matched the type used to suffocate Sandra, and since she kept reusable bags, he couldn’t have gotten one there. It looks like he’s going to get away with it.”

  A jumbled mess of fear, confusion, and anger rolled across her face. If I were her, I’d be weighing my options. There was a chance that if she admitted to what she’d done, the police would accuse her of killing Sandra rather than trying to frame someone else for it. She could also be charged with obstruction of justice or even perjury if the officer took a sworn affidavit from her about how she discovered Sandra’s body.

  She twisted her wedding ring around on her finger. I could almost see her thinking about her children and what it would do to them if she went to prison.

  I was wagering a lot on how much she loved Sandra and wanted to see her killer brought to justice.

  “I think I need to talk to the police about the plastic bag.” Her voice wobbled. “Whoever killed Sandra didn’t put it there. I did.”

  28

  Dean’s funeral, surprisingly, wasn’t the emptiest one I’d attended since coming to Fair Haven. Even though Oliver tried to kill me, I’d gone to his. Russ, Mark, and I were the only ones who attended Oliver’s interment besides the funeral director and the man who ran the backhoe to fill in the hole. It’d been so sad. I was glad I didn’t have to relive that feeling now.

  All the Cavanaughs turned out for Dean’s funeral for the sake of Arielle, Cameron, and Elise. To my surprise, Ken came, as well as Nadine and Sam.

  Before Nadine went to the police, I’d offered to represent her. Since the police did decide to clear Dean, it wasn’t a conflict of interest anymore. I managed to get her probation. As long as she didn’t commit any other crimes for the next few years, she wouldn’t have to serve jail time.

  I didn’t tell her that I’d lied to her. Apparently, I hadn’t been entirely lying even though I didn’t know it at the time. Once they found out from Griffin that Dean was with him during the time of death window, they had started to consider Ken.

  Nadine confessed to finding Sandra face-down in her bed. When she realized that Sandra was dead, she started to call the police. Then she got scared. She knew Dean and his ability to manipulate and lie. She wanted to do something to ensure he’d be charged with Sandra’s murder the way he deserved. She was convinced he’d done it. She went out to her car, brought back duct tape and a plastic bag, and staged Sandra’s body. She knew they shopped at the same grocery store.

  She hadn’t been thinking clearly enough to remember that Sandra used reusable bags. She’d thought about planting the duct tape as well, but she hadn’t been sure whether her finger prints could be wiped off the cardboard roll the tape was on. She took it home with her.

  My explanation of the evidence, along with Nadine’s confession, was enough to convince the district attorney that Sandra’s death was an unfortunate, self-inflicted accident.

  That hadn’t made telling Elise the truth about what had happened any easier. First I’d told her how much Dean wanted to do right by Arielle and Cameron, and then I had to tell her why he’d ended up in the hospital. Mark had offered to tell her for me, but it hadn’t seemed right to pass it off onto him. I wanted to take responsibility for the part I’d played.

  The pastor started his final words, and Elise slipped her hand into mine. Arielle wedged herself up against our legs, and in the edge of my vision, I could barely see Erik holding a sleeping Cameron in his arms.

  When I’d told Elise, she’d walked out without saying anything, and I’d cried for the rest of the day despite my best intentions not to. She’d showed up at my house the next day, gave me a hug, and left without another word. Things had slowly edged back to normal, and I was the second one she called—after Erik—when Dean’s brother called to tell her he passed away. The damage to his heart had been too great.

  As the pastor finished, Elise laid her head on my shoulder. It reminded me of when our friendship first began, sitting by the side of the road. That time, she’d been the one to both hurt me and help me. Friendships, it turned out, weren’t as easy as they seemed on TV. At least, not ones where the bonds were deep and survived the stresses of life, where the people involved showed the worst sides of themselves along with the best and made mistakes that they had to apologize for.

  And those were the kinds of friendships I wanted.

  “I’m glad you’re staying,” Elise said. “I don’t want to lose anyone else.”

  When Mark and I finally talked about it, it’d turned out he was relieved I didn’t want to move to DC. He hadn’t wanted to go, either, but he didn’t want to bias my preference. Being a medical examiner was more stressful at times than research, but he also found it more rewarding. And he hadn’t wanted to leave his family, either. “You wouldn’t have lost me even if we went to DC.”

  “No, but it wouldn’t have been the same.”

  “Nope, it wouldn’t have. I’m glad we’re staying, too.”

  Now that Mark and I had decided to stay in Fair Haven and both turned down the jobs in DC, only one question remained. What in the world was I supposed to do for a career? Because a lawyer who couldn’t argue a case in court wasn’t much of a lawyer at all.

  Bonus Recipe: Stacey’s Maple Syrup Popcorn

  INGREDIENTS:

  5 cups air-popped popcorn

  ½ cup maple syrup

  ½ cup nuts of your choice (optional)

  sea salt

  cookin
g spray OR 1 tablespoon butter

  TOOLS:

  candy thermometer

  large bowl

  mixing spoon

  small sauce pot

  cookie sheet

  INSTRUCTIONS:

  Spray a large bowl and mixing spoon well with cooking spray. (You could also butter them if you prefer.) Spray or butter the cookie sheet or cover it in parchment paper.

  Pop your popcorn. If you don’t have an air popper, find the least flavorful bag of microwave popcorn you can, and pop the amount you need.

  Place popcorn and nuts in the large bowl.

  In a small sauce pot, bring maple syrup to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Continue to boil until the maple syrup reaches approximately 236 degrees based on the candy thermometer. It should just barely form a ball if you drop a drip into cold water.

  While stirring with the buttered spoon, drizzle maple syrup caramel over the popcorn and nuts.

  Spread the popcorn mixture out on the cookie sheet. Sprinkle with sea salt to taste. (If you used microwave popcorn, you’ll need less salt than if you used air-popped popcorn.)

  Allow to cool.

  Store the leftovers (if there are any!) in an airtight container.

  Bucket List: Maple Syrup Mysteries Book 8

  No one should have murder on their bucket list…

  Former lawyer Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes knows she’ll eventually have to either remove the former from in front of lawyer or embrace a new life making maple syrup full-time.

  Problem is, she’s not sure she’s cut out for either.

  When the museum curator who helped her find a replacement antique sap bucket is accused of murdering one of his employees, Nicole agrees to take the case as a way to decide at last which career path she’ll follow. If she can’t successfully argue his case in court, she’ll resign from a legal career for good.