Town in a Maple Madness

by B. B. Haywood

  “The van’s license plate,” Candy interjected. “RIP DIG. Russ Pooley. Doug Gulliver. Both with middle names that began with I. That’s where it came from.”

  Ginny nodded her head slightly in acknowledgement and went on. “We always had a lot of fun with dad’s initials—R. I. P. Doug Gulliver especially. He made a lot of jokes about it over the years, and insisted they use both sets of initials for that license plate. We grew up together, the Gullivers and the Pooleys, since our cabins were close together on the river, so I knew all about Gully’s Boathouse. I figured it would be a good place to hide out for a while. Mick finally agreed. But he couldn’t restrain Random and drive the truck at the same time, so I had to ride in the cab along with him, to keep the dog under control.”

  “And that’s when Hutch spotted you on that back road on Thursday afternoon,” Candy said, “and an older couple saw you as well, a little while later, going north on the Coastal Loop in Mick’s truck. I talked to them at the community center yesterday. They said you were driving crazy, all over the road.”

  “They did, huh?” An enigmatic smile crossed Ginny’s face. “That’s the way it always goes, isn’t it? Something always happens that you don’t expect. Someone’s always where they shouldn’t be, or sees something they weren’t supposed to see. You can count on it.”

  “Why draw so much attention to yourself like that? What happened on the way up there?”

  Ginny gave her a resigned look. “What you’d expect. Random was going crazy. Mick was going a little crazy too. We argued the whole way, and he wasn’t paying much attention to where he was going. Like I said, he wanted to take Neil right to the hospital. But I told him that if we did that, we’d expose ourselves. Everyone would know what we’d done, and we’d probably wind up in jail.”

  “It would have been better than murder,” Candy said softly.

  “Maybe,” Ginny allowed, “but that wasn’t my intention. Just so you know. Everything happened so fast. It just got out of hand. I don’t know how else to explain it. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing. There wasn’t time to make sense of it. I just did it. I was trying to protect the both of us.”

  “Then why did you attack him like that?” Candy asked. “What happened between the two of you? Why stab him, wrap him up in the net, and roll him into the river? And why put the knife in the canoe next to Neil?”

  Ginny laughed at this list of accusations. “Did I really do all that?” she asked, shaking her head, as if in disbelief. “You never really know what you’re capable of doing until you’re backed into a corner, do you? I guess I found out. I will say this: My second mistake was tying up Mick’s hands and feet. At the time, it seemed like the right thing, to make sure he was restrained, since he was still alive at the time. But I guess it wasn’t necessary. If I had just wrapped him in the net and set him adrift in the river, his death might have been passed off as accidental. Of course, the knife wound would have been hard to explain, but they might have missed it, at least until the autopsy. But the tied-up hands and feet were a dead giveaway. I realized it too late.”

  She shrugged. “My bad,” she said, and she smiled again, though it was a different kind of smile, sad and regretful. “Mick used to say that, you know? ‘My bad.’” She sighed, her gaze unfocused. “He was a good man.”

  “So why did you do it?” Candy pressed.

  Ginny’s mood changed almost instantly. “Because he was going to ruin everything!” she said in an exasperated tone. “He was worried about Neil. He was going to take him to the hospital. I couldn’t let him do that, and I couldn’t talk him out of it. I knew Neil had seen Mick and could identify him, and then Mick could identify me. We were illegally tapping trees. So we fought about what to do, and—”

  “You stabbed Mick in the back and rolled him into the river.”

  Ginny looked nearly hysterical now. “I didn’t know what else to do! I couldn’t go to jail.”

  “So you took another way out,” Candy said. She paused, but when Ginny didn’t respond, she continued. “I can guess at the rest. I figure Mick went into the water sometime right around sunset on Thursday night, around seven P.M. After Mick was gone, you tried your best to cover your tracks, and checked in the boathouse to make sure Neil was still unconscious. I imagine you considered taking him out too. It would have been easy at that point. But he saw only Mick in the woods, right? Not you. He couldn’t identify you, so there was no real need to kill him—especially when you had another option.”

  Again, Candy paused, and again Ginny said nothing. But the other woman gave a subtle nod of her head, so Candy went on.

  “You realized that if you left the knife in the canoe next to Neil, it would incriminate Hutch in the murder.”

  Ginny finally spoke up. “No, not him,” she corrected. “Neil.”

  “Neil,” Candy said with a nod of her head. She considered that for a moment. “It all would have worked out perfectly, wouldn’t it? You’d already accused Neil of stealing the knife from Hutch’s collection, so you could make a case that he had it in his possession. But why tell me about it this afternoon? Why not tell the police instead?”

  “Oh, we did,” Ginny revealed. “Or, rather, Hutch did, when they interrogated him. I told him to make sure he mentioned the stolen knife to the police. But I wanted you to know it too. That’s why I asked you over to the place and showed you his collection.”

  “To throw me off the scent?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So what about the knife?” Candy asked. “Neil didn’t steal it from Hutch, did he?”

  “No,” Ginny acknowledged. “You’re right about that. I got mad at Hutch one day, because of . . . something. I don’t even remember what it was now. He can be a frustrating man.”

  “So you retaliated by stealing one of his knives?”

  “Like I said, he loved those knives more than me. It was the only way I could get his attention.”

  “His attention? To tell him what?”

  “About Neil! About what he was doing to our place.”

  “And what was Neil doing to your place?”

  “I told you all this yesterday morning,” Ginny said, her tone turning accusatory, “when you were out at the farm, but I guess you weren’t listening.”

  “I’m listening now.”

  And Ginny complied. “We’ve had a rough time lately,” she said. “Hutch spends more time with his knives than he does working on the farm. We can’t make ends meet anymore—not since Neil moved into town.”

  “Is that why you did it? Money?”

  “That’s part of it,” Ginny admitted. “That, and a lot of anger, and frustration, and even revenge.”

  “And Mick offered to help you teach Neil a lesson?”

  “Mick.” Ginny mouthed the name almost regretfully, and Candy could see the pain in the other woman’s eyes. “We’d been friends since high school,” she said. “We always got along well, even after we married other people. I guess we both had sort of a rebellious streak, which is why we stayed close. We understood each other. One day a month or so ago, I ran into him at the garden center, and we got to talking. I told him I was at the end of my rope,” Ginny confessed. “I said I had to do something. I had to get Hutch’s attention and force him to recognize what was going on.”

  “Why didn’t you just talk to Neil about it?” Candy asked.

  “We tried,” Ginny said, her exasperation returning. “We wanted to come to some sort of agreement with him about supply and pricing. But he’d have none of it. He said he was too independent.”

  “Sounds like Neil,” Candy admitted. “He does tend to keep to himself.”

  “And you didn’t help,” Ginny continued, “lending him a hand over there, helping him sell his maple syrup, taking away half of our profits.”

  Candy could see the other woman’s point, and it saddened h
er. If only she’d known, all this could have been avoided. Instead, the actions of a desperate person had resulted in tragedy.

  “So you talked to Mick, and told him your problem, and then what? You started tapping trees?”

  “It was Mick’s idea, really. He planned a lot of it out,” Ginny explained. “We figured we’d get them mad at each other. Hutch and Neil. Start some sort of feud. Make something happen, try to force them to see what was going on. It probably sounds crazy now, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Part of our rebellious nature, I guess. We began by tapping that sugar bush out toward the end of our property. Hutch loves those trees. We figured it would get him really riled up. And then we headed over to Neil’s place.”

  “Where everything fell apart.”

  Again, Ginny said nothing, but nodded.

  Candy shifted her stance. It was time to end this. There were only a few more threads she needed to unravel before she called the police. “The purple van,” she said. “You left it behind when you rode with Mick to the boathouse. So you had to go back and pick it up. I assume it was purely coincidence that you encountered me on that back road when you did?”

  Ginny shrugged. “I thought I picked a perfect time to do that. But like I said, something always goes wrong. Someone’s always in the wrong place. And there you were, snooping around. I should have known. I thought it was all over then, that you’d spotted me, and could identify me, so of course I had to try to take you out.”

  “You almost succeeded,” Candy said. “That’s twice you tried to kill me.”

  “You’re a definite nuisance, that’s for sure.”

  “So why bring me into this whole thing in the first place? Why call me out to your farm yesterday morning? I would think I’d be the last person you’d want to talk to.”

  Ginny shook her head, and the grim chuckle returned. “Believe me, that wasn’t my idea. It was Hutch’s. He was furious when he found those tapped trees, as I thought he might be. I had hoped he’d march right over here to Neil’s place and start a ruckus, but instead he wanted to go to the police. Of course, I couldn’t let that happen, not right then. Not after what had happened at the boathouse the night before. I tried to talk him out of it, so when he suggested we talk to you instead, I had no choice but to go along.”

  “And you used the opportunity in the best way possible, to throw me off the track, send me off in a different direction.”

  “It almost worked.”

  “Almost,” Candy agreed. “And what about the knife? You said you stole it from Hutch yourself. So why didn’t you return it to the case, after you made your point? And how did it get to the boathouse that night?”

  “The knife,” Ginny said, almost whimsically. “Stealing that was more convenient than I realized at the time. It gave me a way to keep the pressure on Neil—and Hutch bought the whole theft thing, hook, line, and sinker. He can be pretty gullible at times. I didn’t want to leave it around the house or barn, so I took it to the cabin and hid it there. And then Mick happened to see it one day.”

  “When you rendezvoused there with him,” Candy said. “One afternoon around five P.M., is my guess.”

  Ginny looked at her quizzically. “And how would you know that?”

  “He left a message to himself,” Candy said, “written on a map in his workshop. And then I found this, in that garage you burned down.” From her back pocket, she pulled out the old photo of the high school graduating class she’d taken from the garage’s back wall before her escape. She unfolded it and held it up for the other woman to see. “You were known as VIP in high school.”

  Ginny looked grim. “Mick still called me that,” she said, “even after I was married.”

  “It sounds like he cared a lot about you.”

  Ginny shrugged, as if it was all water under the bridge. “I suppose, but he could still be infuriating at times. He took an immediate liking to that knife when he saw it. I told him to keep his hands off it, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I should have just tossed it into the river,” she said, “and none of this would have happened. But I didn’t. I held on to it. Stupid mistake.”

  “So how did it get into Mick’s back?” Candy asked, her tone softening just a bit.

  Ginny sighed and shook her head. “It was . . . just there, at the wrong time,” she said, and she turned angry again, as if she was still mad at Mick. “We met at the cabin again before we tapped the trees, to coordinate our efforts. He insisted on taking two vehicles—said we might need one as a backup, depending on how much sap we got. That’s why we took that old van. And then, right before we left the cabin, he must have spotted the knife, and took it with him that day. I didn’t notice he had it tucked into his belt until we got out in the woods. I was furious with him about it, so I took it away from him, and slipped it into my coat pocket.”

  “So you had it with you when you got to the boathouse,” Candy said.

  “Like I said, it was right there, in my pocket. It slipped right into my hand. What could I do? It’s too bad, though. I’m sorry he’s gone,” she admitted. “I’m sorry for what happened. We had a lot of fun together, back when we were young. And I’ll give him this much—he knew what he was doing. He knew how to milk those trees in record time. And he knew those back roads pretty well too.”

  She was about to say more when they heard a siren nearby. Candy took a few steps back and turned her head. She saw red lights reflected off the trees outside the barn. A few moments later, a fire truck pulled into the driveway and screeched to a halt as a trio of volunteer firemen leaped off and headed up through the strawberry fields toward the burning sugar shack, to assess the damage.

  Candy was about to call out to them when she heard Random barking furiously. She turned just in time to see Ginny headed out the far side of the barn. She’d used the distraction to make her escape, and wildly swung the branch she carried to keep Random at bay. Candy tucked the photo back into a pocket and started after her, but quickly realized Ginny was circling around the back of the barn on the outside, trying to get to her white Explorer. So Candy reversed direction and headed out the front of the barn. But she was a few steps too late. Ginny had managed to fight off Random and was climbing into her SUV. Candy sprinted toward it and had just reached its front bumper when it backed away, tires spinning a little in the soggy ground. It shimmied back and forth erratically, until Ginny slammed on the brakes, switched gears, and gunned the engine, bringing the vehicle around, headed toward the exit. As it slipped and slid in the mud, Random barked furiously at the tires.

  Candy glanced over toward her Jeep. She was about to run toward it and chase after Ginny. But she didn’t have to.

  The fire truck had left deep ruts in the lane. The tires of Ginny’s big Explorer dropped right down into one of the deepest ruts. The SUV sank fast and quickly became mired in the muck. It must have been a rear-wheel drive edition, not equipped with four-wheel drive, like Candy’s Jeep. The front tires popped up a little as the rear wheels spun viciously, digging deeper, unable to get any traction. As Random circled the vehicle, barking at it from every angle, Ginny gunned the engine again and again, but to no avail.

  Mud season had claimed its latest victim.

  EPILOGUE

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Neil Crawford a few days later as he sat at the kitchen table, “of getting out of the maple sugaring business.”

  “You are? Really?” Candy flicked her cornflower blue eyes toward him and tilted her head curiously. After taking a moment to consider his statement, she said. “Gee, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

  “Exactly!” said Neil, and he waggled a finger at her. “Once again, you’ve hit it right on the head.”

  “I seem to have a knack for doing that.”

  “You do indeed. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

  “So what brought you to this mome
ntous decision?” she asked, leaning forward so she could pinch off a small piece of his Chocolate Maple Brownie, which she popped into her mouth. It was a few days old, but still delicious. As she chewed, she arched an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ve heard what kind of week I’ve had.”

  “I’ve heard. It was a rough one.”

  “It was indeed. And, to be honest, I’m just not sure I’m cut out for it anymore—sugaring, I mean. I didn’t realize it could be so, well, competitive.”

  “I think cutthroat is the word you’re looking for,” piped in Maggie Wolfsburger, who received a questioning look from her husband at her comment. She nudged Herr Georg. “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” The German baker could only smile and nod.

  “Money can make people do strange things,” Candy agreed.

  “It’s true it got out of hand around here,” Doc said. He was leaning back against the kitchen counter, arms crossed thoughtfully. “But it’s not just here on the cape. There have been reports of stolen sap around this region for years. Burned-down sugar shacks too.”

  “Right, burned-down shacks.” Neil let out a long, resigned breath. They’d released him from the hospital that morning, and Candy had driven up to Ellsworth to pick him up—taking Random with her, of course. And since it was his first evening back in town, she’d insisted he have dinner with her and Doc. He’d accepted, and been grateful for the invitation, but first he’d wanted to stop by the berry farm to survey the damage and pick up a few things. They hadn’t stayed long. There wasn’t much left to see of the sugar shack, except a still-smoldering foundation.

  Now they were all gathered in the kitchen at Blueberry Acres—and the group had grown as word got around that Neil was back. Finn Woodbury and his wife, Marti, had come over as soon as they’d heard, bringing fried chicken and potato salad with them to help out with dinner. Maggie and Herr Georg ran over as well. She’d saved some brownies for them, and brought a big bowl of salad, homemade dinner rolls, and a peach pie. Artie had stopped by with his own homemade chili, and Bumpy had pulled in as well, bringing beer, wine, and chips. They’d just about finished eating dinner, and were lingering over coffee and dessert.