Town in a Maple Madness

by B. B. Haywood

  As the traffic thickened again, her foot played on the brake pedal. Her attention was pulled back to the cars in front of her, so she wasn’t able to keep an eye on the sides of the road as much as she would have liked. She saw a few markers and small signs sweep past her peripheral vision on either side, but couldn’t take her eyes off the traffic long enough to read them. She also noticed a few narrow driveways and homes tucked in among the shrubbery, trees, and vines along the river, but they were quickly lost from view.

  The road swerved inland then, before entering a low area and stretching out before her. The trees and vegetation on either side opened up, and suddenly she was joining a line of cars stopped at the intersection of Route 1, the main coastal artery in this area of the state. She watched the northern sky as she waited for the traffic light to turn green. The clouds were drifting eastward with a lack of urgency that made her envious.

  Soon she was moving again. Most of the cars in front of her turned either left or right, headed west or east, downstate or up the coast. But Candy drove straight ahead, still going northward, onto a road less traveled.

  Narrower and more pockmarked than its southern leg, it again angled toward the river, skirting it at some places. There were a few picnic and fishing spots along here, and low cabins with sloped tin roofs and stacks of firewood piled under dark windows. She could see narrow wooden piers jutting out into the river in some places. Sail- and motorboats were tied up to some of the docks, and a few canoes were pulled up on the shore. There would be fishing poles and equipment in all these places—and fishing nets too.

  She knew she was close to the spot marked on the map. It certainly fit all the criteria of a possible crime scene location: river access, fishing equipment, a sense of isolation yet just off the main road, making a clean getaway possible. The beats of her heart intensified.

  She finally slowed and pulled over to the side of the road. She wanted to check the spot on the map again, to see if she was in the right location. As she fumbled for her phone, she glanced in the rearview mirror, just to make sure there was no stray van out there. But she saw no cars or people, either in front of or behind her. She had a few moments alone, to orient herself.

  She brought up the photo she’d taken of the map in Mick’s workshop and zoomed in on it. The old map clearly showed Route 1 and the Coastal Loop. And the bridge over the river, though it looked older than the current version. In the map’s illustration, there was a boat on the river below the bridge, and a trio of low log cabins on the river’s bank. A stylized boy in a straw hat and yellow shirt, looking much like Tom Sawyer, fished from one of the docks. An old woody station wagon, an icon of the fifties, was crossing over the bridge, and above that, a passenger airplane flew low in the sky.

  The red X was right there, hovering over that spot. But she couldn’t tell if the location it indicated was north of the bridge or south of it.

  She puzzled over that for a few moments. It wasn’t much to go on.

  After checking the mirrors again, she switched off the engine, opened the door, and climbed out of the Jeep.

  Her best bet at the moment, she thought, was to make a quick reconnaissance.

  Hands tucked into the pockets of her fleece jacket, she tried to look as inconspicuous as possible as she crossed an area of low grasses and shrubbery, headed toward the river’s bank. There were two low cabins to either side of her, but both were some distance away, a few dozen yards at least. And they both looked dark, abandoned for the season. She doubted anyone was around to notice her.

  She’d expected a somewhat typical sandy riverbank, with a gradual slope down to the water, but instead it was rougher and rather rocky along this stretch of the river, with the bank a few feet above the water’s edge. Good for keeping the cabins high in case of a flood, but not ideal for rolling a body wrapped in a net into the water.

  She turned and looked downriver. That was a better prospect, she could see almost immediately. The bank lowered a little farther along, and she noticed a few locations that might be what she was looking for.

  With a quick glance around, she dug her hands a little deeper into her pockets and started off along the riverbank.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  She walked slowly, headed downstream, choosing her steps carefully. She didn’t want to lose her footing on the uneven, debris-strewn, and sometimes slick surfaces and injure herself, but she also wanted to make sure she didn’t miss anything. As she moved, she kept her head low and her hands in her pockets. Her eyes flicked back and forth, across and around, on the lookout for anything unusual, anything that might help her unravel the meaning behind the X on the map. She was quiet and cautious. She didn’t want to look like she was snooping. She just wanted to appear . . . casual.

  Not that it mattered much. As before, it seemed no one was around. She appeared to be all alone in this tiny corner of the world, so close to civilization yet also off on its own, hidden away from view. All the small riverside cabins and shacks along here, spaced generously apart to give them plenty of maneuvering room and privacy, looked deserted and locked up—with actual padlocks, in some cases—as she passed them by. Some had small signs on their properties, down close to the riverbank, announcing to anyone who might be traveling along this stretch of the river the names of the owners of this cabin or that one—Bell and Donovan, Cook and Kimball, Robinson and Pooley, she read as she passed them by. But the owners were all absent today. No smoke swirled from the chimneys. No one peered out a window, no voices spoke in the distance. There were no cell phones ringing or TVs or radios playing faintly in the background. Only the sounds of the wind and the cold river kept her company as she progressed downstream.

  The Route 1 bridge soon appeared in the distance, looming over the trees a quarter of a mile or so ahead. She could hear the faint whoosh and echoes of cars and tractor trailers speeding by. The river gurgled. Birds called in the trees.

  Candy turned first one direction, then the other, still cautious. She listened as well as looked. But she saw, and heard, no one.

  She had to admit, it felt a little . . . spooky.

  After a few dozen more steps she finally came to a stop to catch her breath and have another look around. She checked behind her to see how far she’d come, then looked ahead again before continuing on at a more purposeful pace. She decided she’d go just to the other side of the bridge before turning back. Maybe she’d move the Jeep and search farther downstream. Maybe not. Maybe this was nothing but a waste of time. Maybe—

  She stopped so fast her feet nearly slid out from beneath her. She’d spotted a subtle change in the ground a few feet in front of her. At first her mind didn’t quite register what see was seeing—only that it was an aberration of some sort, a disturbance in the patterns of leaves and twigs and stones and matted vegetation. A shallow indentation, she realized as her brain began to make sense of it. That’s what it was, stretching perpendicular to her in either direction, a very shallow trench of sorts, like a smear across the land.

  It looked as if something had been dragged through here. Something heavy, like a huge sack of potatoes.

  Or a body.

  That thought caused a tingling sensation to crawl up the skin of her arms, but she mentally brushed it away, along with any feelings of trepidation. Instead, she took a step closer and leaned in for a better look. Her gaze narrowed as her breaths came almost to a standstill.

  Yes, she thought, something definitely has been dragged or rolled through here. Long, thin scrapes stretched through the dirt, and she noticed that the still-dead grasses over which the object had been dragged were pushed down or flattened completely, all in the direction of the river.

  Her gaze shifted to that direction.

  The indentation, scrapes, and flattened ground cover all led right to the water’s edge.

  It seemed obvious that whatever heavy object had been dragged through here had wound up in
the river.

  Her brow furrowed in thought. Could she have found the scene of the crime? It had all the makings of it. So far everything seemed to fit.

  How long would it have taken a body to float down the river from this point to the place where Mick Rilke had been found this morning? A few hours? Overnight? A day or two?

  She straightened, took a step back, and turned to look inland, away from the river.

  The vegetation was thick in this area, but she thought she could spot something back there among the trees. She started in that direction warily, following the drag marks as they stretched across the landscape. Again she moved slowly, and as she went, her eyes scanned the ground.

  She stopped a short distance along. It looked as if a jar of strawberry jam had been spilled across this area. Some of it had soaked into the ground.

  She thought she knew what it was, and quickly backed away. There she froze as she considered her next move. She wanted to leave this area completely undisturbed just in case it was . . . well, in case it was what she thought it might be. When she finally started off again, after giving herself a few moments to recover, she skirted the area by a wide berth.

  Here, on the other side of the suspect spot, the drag marks disappeared—or, rather, they simply ended at the reddened ground she’d just encountered. That made sense. She hesitated a moment, trying to imagine the scene in her head, before she continued inland.

  She’d gone only a few more paces when she saw it—a small, weathered wooden sign, attached to a low post pounded into the ground half a dozen feet in front of her. Faded red letters hand-painted on the sign identified the place.

  GULLY’S BOATHOUSE, it read.

  She shifted her gaze from the sign to the fringe of brown vegetation before her. There was an upspring of thin trees here, intermixed with dense berry bushes and ferns, backlit by the dying light of the day.

  She squinted at the foliage. What was hiding in there? She spotted what appeared to be a side wall of some sort. A small building, perhaps a cabin or a shack, was hidden back behind the screen of still-hibernating nature. It was well camouflaged, painted a sort of faded grayish color with brushes of green and brown that helped it disappear into the landscape. You had to look carefully to see it.

  The boathouse, apparently. Belonging to someone named Gully.

  She pondered the name but it didn’t ring a bell. She’d been in town awhile now, and knew most of the villagers, but there were still some she didn’t know and hadn’t run into yet. Gully—whoever he or she was—apparently fit into the latter category.

  It didn’t matter, though. She had enough evidence to contact the police. This appeared to be the scene of the crime. At the very least, something had happened here—a fisherman had cleaned a few fish, possibly, or someone had dressed wild game he’d killed, maybe a small animal like a rabbit or squirrel, or maybe even a duck or wild turkey, which were often seen around here this time of year.

  But something told her it was more than that—possibly the result of an argument that had escalated too far, resulting in a physical confrontation and eventually leading to violence.

  From the evidence she’d seen, and from what she’d learned over the course of the day, she could begin to assemble the pieces in her mind, to visualize what might have happened here. Sometime late yesterday afternoon or early evening, possibly around six P.M., Mick had driven up here to meet someone. For some reason he’d driven too fast and was swerving across the lanes, according to Stuart and Audra, the couple she’d talked to at the community center. Apparently Mick had been on his way to meet a VIP, or possibly five of them. Maybe he’d been late for the meeting, and that’s why he’d been driving so fast headed northward on the Coastal Loop. But when he arrived here, something had gone wrong. There’d been an argument or misunderstanding. Tempers had flared. At some point, for whatever reason, the tide had turned against Mick. He’d been attacked from behind, ambushed, and overpowered. Stabbed in the back, the police had said. She’d possibly just seen further evidence of that. While he was down, his hands and feet were bound, he was wrapped in a net, and then he was dragged or rolled into the river. He’d floated downstream overnight to the marina area, where his body had been discovered this morning.

  Had Mick known he’d been walking into danger? Had he known his attacker? It seemed likely, she thought, though the opposite could also be true. Mick could have been the instigator himself. Maybe he’d come here with vengeance on his mind, intending to harm someone else, only to have his plan backfire on him.

  Backfire.

  Stabbed.

  A sharp weapon of some kind, she thought. There could be any number of items that fit that description around a camp like this. A hunting knife, a carving knife, a boning knife, a simple pocketknife, possibly even a machete. Maybe something from a tackle box, or the toolbox of a riverboat? The weapon that incapacitated Mick Rilke could be anything like that.

  She looked around with renewed interest as she reached into her back pocket for her phone. No sense delaying this any longer. If there was anything else to be found here, such as a possible murder weapon, it was up to the police investigators to locate it.

  She’d swiped at the screen and was searching for the number of the Cape Willington Police Department when she heard a banging noise echoing through the vegetation in front of her. It was a low, ominous, metallic thump of some sort, followed by a frustrated yap of a bark and a series of sharp scraping sounds.

  Candy froze, her eyes ricocheting back and forth across the landscape before settling on the half-hidden boathouse nestled into the thick fringe directly in front of her.

  Gully’s Boathouse.

  The sounds came from in there, she thought. She was almost certain of it. The tingling sensation returned to the skin of her arms. Someone could be trapped in there, she thought. The bark had sounded desperate.

  She glanced down at her phone, slipped it back in her pocket, and set off to investigate.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Several paths led through the dense underbrush in front of her. She chose the one that was slightly to her left and started toward it at a cautious pace. It was the widest, most traveled path, which she figured was also the one where she’d least likely encounter an ambush of some sort—say, from a river snake, or something more treacherous.

  The path wound among the still-dormant trees, bushes, and ferns in a serpentine pattern for a short distance before depositing her in a clearing occupied by several small buildings. In addition to the boathouse, which was the gray-painted building she’d spotted, she saw a narrow lean-to hitched up against a trio of trees, with a short shingled overhang that protected a dwindling pile of seasoned firewood; a small outside workstation, also between a couple of trees, with a well-used thick wood plank for a counter, presumably used for cleaning fish; an outdoor grill next to a weathered picnic table; and a small tin garden shed set off by itself on the far side of the boathouse, back toward the edge of the woods.

  She also noticed the big, black maple sugaring pot set up between the boathouse and tin shed, right next to the picnic table. The pot looked ancient, as if it had been boiling sap since the turn of the previous century. It was nearly two feet across at the mouth, with a scorched, bell-shaped bottom. It hung from a tripod formed by thick tree branches, leaned together and lashed at the top with a length of twine. Beneath it was a circular fire pit rimmed with blackened rocks.

  She didn’t need to be told twice what had been happening: Someone had been boiling sap here, in this isolated spot—perhaps recently.

  Could it be the same person who had collected sap from the illegally tapped trees over at the Milbrights’ farm? And who was this Gully person? Could he, or she, be responsible for everything that had happened in the past day or two, including the murder of Mick Rilke?

  She half expected to see an old purple van with a license plate that read RIP DIG p
arked nearby, partially hidden in the trees or ditched behind the back side of the boathouse. Or even Mick Rilke’s missing red snowplow truck. But there was nothing. No vehicles, no sign of anyone around, just as she’d seen at every other place she’d passed along the river.

  She turned her gaze back toward the boathouse—which, she thought, was oddly named, since it wasn’t on the waterfront, as most similar structures were. Typically, she thought, the idea was to drive or haul the boat inside so it could be repaired. This place, she thought, was too far away from the river to haul a boat inside easily.

  She supposed it might be more of a workshop and general guy’s hangout than a boathouse, and a sign over the iron-hinged dual swinging front doors, now tightly closed and latched together, seemed to confirm that.

  MARINE AND MECHANICAL FIX-IT, the sign read in faded block letters across the top in an arcing fashion, and underneath that, in smaller letters, EST. 1963, IRVING GULLIVER AND SONS, PROPRIETORS.

  Hmm. She made a mental note to check that out as soon as she had a chance. But for now, she wanted to find out where those thumping and scraping sounds had come from.

  She wondered if she should sidle close enough to the boathouse to have a look in through the small window in the building’s side door. Maybe that’s where the sounds had come from. She was still considering her next move when she heard the barks again. Several quick yaps and more low, thumping sounds.

  At first she thought the sounds were coming from the boathouse. But no, she realized a moment later. Not the boathouse.