I made my way through the trees, checking carefully for signs of disturbance. I reached the trees that had previously been damaged without spotting any new problems. I looked at the bridge grafts Jill had attempted and hoped they would take. Running my mittened hand over the bark on the largest tree I sent up a little wish for healing and hoped both the tree and something bigger than us both would hear me.
Up ahead, a bit closer to Frank’s property line I saw trampled snow at the base of more trees. As I drew closer I could see more girdling. I followed what seemed like a path of damaged trees deeper and deeper into the sugar bush. As I walked my uneasiness grew. Now and then a twig cracked or a startled bird burst into the air and I jumped out of my skin. I looked around me but saw no one and told myself I was just imagining things. I was at least as worried about running into Beau as I was a murderer. Even with Frank dead that dog was a menace.
I wasn’t sure where the property line was exactly and I kept going until I thought I spotted some movement through the trees. My heart jumped into my throat. Whatever it was, it was too tall to be Beau and the figure just sort of popped up out of nowhere. I wanted to turn around and pretend I had never seen anything worth investigating. But the look on Jill’s face as she mentioned her banker flitted through my mind.
If someone was still fooling around, hampering the cooperative, I wanted to know who and why more than I wanted to turn tail and run. I still couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched as I picked my way through the trees, hoping to sneak up on whomever I has seen. I wished Graham were with me this time as I crept quietly along. I wondered briefly about guardian angels and what they might look like and whether they ever went on vacation.
Things in the woods have a certain wildness to them, a character of naturalness that humans never seem quite able to duplicate no matter how much we try. Something up in front of me had the look of falseness, or artifice that is a sure sign people have been there. I stepped closer, around a pile of hemlock branches and almost fell down into what looked like a cellar way with no house on top of it. Rough wooden doors sagged open on either side of the stairway.
I didn’t hear anything coming from underneath me so I eased myself down the stairs, one step at a time, pausing on each to listen for noises from either below or above. The earth at the sides of the stairs was held back by lengths of logs sunk deep into the soil. At the bottom, another door, this one made of heavy steel, stood slightly open. I pushed it open slowly and peeked around.
The lighting level was low and seemed to be coming from a single source in a corner. I wished I had a flashlight. I swung the door open widely to let in more light and stepped all the way into the underground room. The first thing I noticed was the tidiness of it. Shelving lined the walls and supplies of all sorts filled every inch of space. Food, bottled water, beer, books, batteries, and toilet paper crowded together in row upon row. The space was enormous. Forced to guess I’d have said it rivaled Grampa’s cow barn for square footage.
It looked like something you’d see on the news after the FBI raided a cult compound. The only things that looked out of place were a couple of boxes stacked on the floor. I lifted the flap on the top one to reveal crumpled newspaper carefully wedged as cushioning around tree taps, sap buckets, and even an old hand auger for making holes in a maple tree. It looked like exactly the sort of things missing from Kenneth’s sugaring display. It was packed like someone was moving their best china cross-country in a covered wagon.
The second thing I noticed was that I recognized the place. I turned my head around slowly and stepped farther into the room to explore, trying to remember where I had seen it before. An old metal flashlight lay on its side on a table next to a pile of fabric and just within its beam of light I saw Phoebe sagging in a chair. Her legs were tied together at the ankles and her arms were lashed to the arms of the chair with what looked like torn strips of fabric. She appeared to be asleep.
I laid my hand on her shoulder and gave her a little shake but she didn’t rouse. I picked up the flashlight and pointed it at her to get a better look at her face. Most of her hair was stuffed up in a baseball cap but the little bit escaping on the right side was matted and sticky. I touched it and checked my fingers. Blood. I shook her again but still got no response.
I touched her wrist, checking for a pulse and felt one thrumming away. Not that I was any kind of an expert but it seemed fairly strong. I bent over to begin wrestling with the knot binding her ankles when it occurred to me there was no way I was going to be able to drag Phoebe out of the bunker, let alone carry her to safety by myself. I had to get her to wake up. There was only one thing for it. I started singing.
I may be small but my voice is not. My pipes can rattle the chandelier in the opera house if I take the notion to do so. Now I’m not saying this is a case of good things coming in a small package. Just about anyone who has heard me lift up a joyful noise has asked me to stop doing so immediately.
Celadon told me once my singing sounds like a cross between cats brawling and a high-speed train collision. For the first time ever, I was hoping she was right. No one who wasn’t dead ought to be able to remain in the land of Nod with me serenading them. I dug deep and let out a noise loud enough to deafen myself. Which explains why I didn’t notice someone creeping up behind me until I felt something hard pressed against the back of my head.
I felt my voice choke off in mid note. I tried to turn around but a strong hand gripped the back of my neck and pinned me in place.
“Well, this is unfortunate.” Kenneth Shaw’s voice filled the room and I noticed Phoebe’s eyes fluttering. “What brings you by?” He squeezed even harder on my neck.
“I was checking for more damaged trees up at Jill’s place and I thought I saw something moving around over here. With everything that’s been going on I thought I’d better check it out. What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m tying up loose ends.” He shoved me toward a second chair and pushed me into it. Grabbing the flashlight from my trembling hand, Kenneth placed it on the table facing the fabric. Keeping the gun in his other hand trained on me, he began tearing strips from the fabric, which looked like a bedsheet, with the help of his teeth. Once he had three strips he stopped. “Now unless you want me to shoot you, I suggest you tie your ankles together, just like your friend here did.” Kenneth tossed one of the fabric strips into my lap and waggled the gun at me.
“I’m a loose end?” I had no idea what he was talking about. I racked my brain for how he could possibly be involved with what was going on. Then I remembered the boxes. The items from the Shaws’ place had been too carefully packed to be the handiwork of someone who didn’t care about them. “You’re the vandal, aren’t you?” Kenneth shook his head sadly at me and gestured at the fabric in my lap with the gun.
“Please, just get on with it.”
“But why? Why would you do something like that to your neighbors? To your friends? It wasn’t the competition, was it?” I bent down and started fastening my ankles together, hoping he would start talking if I started cooperating.
“Of course it wasn’t the competition. I sell more syrup in a month than most of the rest of the producers in town sell in a year. Now, I’m going to put the gun down to tie up your hands. I’ll still be able to get to it faster than you if I need to. If you give me any trouble, I’ll shoot Phoebe. Do you understand?” I nodded and held still while he tied each of my wrists to the arms of the chair. Finally, after all these years it was like Phoebe and I were wearing matching outfits. If only she were awake, she might be pleased.
“What was it then?”
“The cooperative. You just had to try to solve some- one else’s problems. I swear it’s a genetic thing with all of you Greenes. It’s like you are chromosomally unable to mind your own business if you see any problems in the community.”
“But you are a community leader yourself. Why wouldn’t yo
u want the cooperative to go forward?”
“The inspection.”
“But you run a first-rate place. You would have easily passed the inspection and it isn’t as if the five-dollar fee would have been a hardship for you.”
“Oh it would have passed for quality but then I would have needed to explain all the syrup we were storing.” I thought back to all the barrels in the back room at Kenneth’s place.
“You do have a lot more in storage than I would have thought.” Kenneth gave both wrists a tug to verify the bonds were secure.
“Now how would you know that?”
“I stopped by today to verify Dean’s alibi. I thought he might have been the one who took your valuables. While I was there I noticed Bingley had gotten into the trash and made a mess of the yard. I let myself into the sugarhouse to look for a new trash bag to clean it all up.”
“What did I tell you about compulsive do-gooderness?”
“I spotted the paintbrush you must have used to deface your own wall and a whole lot of barrels. That still doesn’t explain why you’re doing this.”
“The syrup didn’t come from my own trees. And the inspectors would have been suspicious of all the excess and where it came from. I couldn’t let them into the facility. I couldn’t explain to you why I didn’t want to participate so I decided to sabotage all the sugarhouses to make it look like joining the cooperative was a bad idea. Then when I chose not to be a part of it no one would think twice.”
“Where did all the excess come from?”
“You must have heard of the warehouse heist up in Canada.” I felt my jaw drop, just like in a cartoon.
“You mean the robbery at the syrup reserve a couple of years ago? The syrup in the barrels came from that?” The vast majority of the world’s maple syrup supply comes from Quebec. Even though syrup’s per-barrel price is approximately thirteen times that of crude oil, security and inventory control at the warehouse had been low-key. Unfortunately, someone had taken advantage of that fact and had used trucks to make off with around eighteen million dollars worth of syrup, wholesale. It was one of the biggest agricultural heists in world history.
“Exactly.”
“But why would you do a thing like that? I thought you loved making syrup?”
“You love making syrup. I’m sick to death of the work and the unpredictability of the whole business.”
“But what about the tradition? Your family has been doing it at least as long as mine.”
“But unlike your family, mine has no interest in continuing the tradition. Both of the kids have moved away and have lives of their own. It’s not like I’m going to ask an oral surgeon and an aviation engineer to drop their careers to park in the woods and draw fluids off of trees for a few weeks each year.”
“You could have just stopped sugaring if you were sick of it. You didn’t need to do any of this.”
“You’re wrong about that, too. We’ve been barely keeping up appearances for years. Most of our wealth was tied up in stocks and real estate. You must have heard how well all of that’s been doing lately. And the kids’ college costs just about did us in. When someone in the business offered to sell me a whole lot of the stolen syrup at a deep, deep discount. I took all the cash I could get my hands on and bought it. We’re finally getting back on our feet because of the tremendous profit.” My head was reeling, trying to reconcile what I thought I knew with what I was being told. The Shaws couldn’t be thieves or saboteurs, could they?
“How did you expect to move enough syrup to make it worth the risk without attracting attention?” Unless their foot traffic was a lot heavier than ours I couldn’t imagine how what he was doing could have paid off.
“I set up an agreement with a major restaurant chain a year or so ago. I’ve been selling it to them in bulk ever since.”
“And they didn’t ask any questions?”
“No, Dani. Unlike you, they knew when to stop asking questions.” Which only brought another one to mind. One I really didn’t want the answer to but couldn’t keep from asking.
“Did you kill Frank?” I felt queasy and dizzy enough that I was almost glad to be lashed to something more stable than myself. Phoebe’s eyes opened wide just in time to hear the answer.
“It couldn’t be helped. He caught me in his sugarhouse starting to sabotage the place.”
“Why would you sabotage Frank’s if he wasn’t going to join the cooperative?”
“Because I hated his guts for all the harassment I’ve had to endure from him all these years. He showed up at every single board meeting I was a member of for as long as he lived in Sugar Grove. That man made a hobby out of giving me grief. So I figured, if I was damaging properties of people I liked, why wouldn’t I go ahead and throw Frank in for good measure. Besides, damaging his place might have made people even more unsure about joining if they weren’t absolutely positive about where the danger was coming from.”
“So you decided to kill him?”
“I couldn’t let him live anymore than I can let the two of you. What he knew would have led straight back to investigating my property and I would have been out of business and in prison instead. And now, I need to get my boxes and get on the road before Nicole gets home. She hates it when I’m late for dinner.”
“You wouldn’t really just leave us here like this.” I tried to sound convincing instead of terrified and whiny but I don’t think I quite managed it. I felt my voice sliding and cracking as the words slipped out and even with my ankles tied, my knees were knocking like I was a one-woman band with a tambourine strapped between them.
“You’re right, I almost forgot something.” Kenneth started patting down my jacket and I suddenly worried he was a dirty old man in addition to all his other faults. In response to a jingling he reached into my pocket and pulled out the keys to the Clunker. “You must have parked at Jill’s if you were checking her trees. I’ll need to get rid of that sorry excuse for a car if I don’t want anyone to find you. But don’t worry, I’ve got a couple of places in mind to stash it.” He patted the top of my head, grabbed his boxes, and left. I heard the metal door clanging shut and then nothing but the sound of Phoebe starting to sob.
Twenty-two
“It’s okay, Phoebe. We’ll get out of here.” I tried using my babysitting voice, the one I use with Hunter and Spring when they stub their toes or pinch their fingers in a kitchen drawer. It didn’t seem to work as well on Phoebe as it did on the kids. I would have scootched my chair closer to hers but just like always, my feet didn’t even come close to reaching the floor.
“No, we won’t.”
“Someone is bound to come looking for us. We just need to wait it out.” And try not to think about the need to use the bathroom. My bladder isn’t any bigger than the rest of me. I’m like a toy dog that way.
“It won’t matter if they do. This is a survival bunker and it’s meant not to be found. Frank built it secretly more than ten years ago and no one has ever got wind of it.” That explained all the food and water and other supplies.
“But surely it shows? Or someone can hear us if we yell loudly enough.” I started singing again. Phoebe yelled even above my racket.
“It’s soundproofed and the whole place is hidden under the brush entirely if you just cover it over with the branches we keep piled up nearby.”
* * *
“Cut branches should dry out and leave this place exposed after a while.”
“It’s winter. You know how long a wreath stays fresh-looking on a door in this kind of weather. The same can be said for hemlock boughs.”
“But eventually they’ll wither.”
“And so will we. You and I will have died of thirst long before this place is easy to spot. If we’re lucky, someday they’ll find our bodies.” Phoebe began to sob again. “We’re going to die completely surrounded by survival supplies. H
ow ironic is that?”
“If it’s so hard to find this place, how did Kenneth do it?”
“He told me he saw it the night he was out girdling Jill’s trees. I left the brush pulled away and the outer doors open when I ran back to the house to get something. I wasn’t here and he checked it out and left.”
“But why would he put his stuff in here?”
“I guess he had the stuff in the back of his SUV when he drove up here to vandalize the sugarhouse. He wanted to get his things back so he remembered this place and he left them here for safekeeping. I guess he thought either they would go unnoticed or someone would call the police and they would find their way back to him in the end.”
“So he was here checking up on them since you didn’t call the police?”
“Exactly. I came in and found him in here. He hit me on the head. I was sort of stunned, I guess, and he took advantage of that in order to tie me up. I kept drifting in and out of consciousness as he kept coming back and forth for his boxes and yelling at me for being here and forcing him to hurt me.”
“Was today the first time you noticed Kenneth’s boxes?”
“No. I spotted them when I was here yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you call Mitch?”
“Because people would be even more inclined to think Frank was the vandal. And this proved to me he wasn’t. Besides, I couldn’t let Mitch see this place.”
“Why not? It’s a little kooky but it isn’t anything to be ashamed of. I bet Mitch would actually think it was pretty interesting.”
“He does.”
“If he doesn’t know about it, how can he think it’s interesting?” I looked around trying to think what she could mean. In the dim light from the flashlight Kenneth had been gentlemanly enough to leave, my eyes made out a vintage New Hampshire vanity license plate with the word GEEZER from Backwoods Bruce’s videos. “Wait a minute, was Frank Backwoods Bruce?” Phoebe shook her head.
Maple Mayhem (A Sugar Grove Mystery) Page 21