Drizzled With Death (16 page)

I caught up with Felicia at the library, where she volunteers at the
GED program during off-hours. I waited around a corner listening until I was sure I wasn’t interrupting someone then let myself into the quiet space.

“The library’s closed,” Felicia called over her shoulder automatically, her attention focused on packing a tote bag with books and papers.

“I came to see you,” I said, feeling strange at how loud my voice sounded.

“Dani, I would have thought you’d be out at the Black Friday sales getting some Christmas shopping done.” She smoothed a stack of papers with a small hand and gave her attention to me. I caught myself wondering if that same hand had twisted the top of one of my syrup bottles and slipped in poison. It made me sick to my stomach to wonder such a thing about a woman so long a friend of the family. But wonder it I did. When you watch the news or read the newspaper and become aware of a crime, you don’t really give much thought to the ways it impacts a community. Sure, you think of the victim and their immediate family. If they left young children behind, it is easy to consider how lives are changed. If the murderer is revealed to be someone close to the family, everyone understands the sense of betrayal.

But what you don’t know, until it happens in your own town, is how small things shift and feel tainted. How the offhand comments of long-term acquaintances take on shades of meaning you would never before have assigned them. How quirks and habits suddenly look like something potentially fraught with malice. Before Alanza took a plunge into her pancakes, I never would have wondered if a mild-mannered innkeeper who helped increase her fellow community members’ chances of job success would bop someone off.

Standing there with Felicia, I felt angry that someone would do something in my town so terrible I would change the way I looked at my friends and neighbors. So far, I had been looking for ways to slide my questions into conversations as nonconfrontationally as possible. The anger I was feeling prompted me to plunge ahead with my queries without apology.

“With everything going on with Greener Pastures, I didn’t feel much like shopping, no matter how good the deals.”

“I’d be upset, too. What brings you by the library?”

“I wanted to ask you about last Friday night.”

“What about it?”

“You said you were at the quilting group but you weren’t. Tansey said so at Thanksgiving dinner.” It was hard to do but I kept my eyes locked on hers instead of staring at my shoes, which would be my usual inclination when embarrassing someone. Felicia remained quiet for a moment, her hand frozen in mid smooth across the stack of papers. Then her eyes dropped and her shoulders sagged. She sank into the seat beside her.

“You caught me. I didn’t want anyone to know.” My hearted bounced around in my chest. I tried to remember where all the exits were in case she decided to bolt, or worse, if I needed a quick escape route of my own.

“So where were you really?”

“Out at the Loon Lodge with Jim Parnell.” A tear rolled down her pink cheek. Her sagging shoulders started shaking. I looked over at the librarian’s cluttered desk and spotted a box of tissues. I grabbed them and handed the box to her. I could understand why she would be upset. Maybe she wasn’t going to confess to murder after all.

“So Roland doesn’t know about it?” Loon Lodge was a grubby motel and coffee shop on the far side of town. To be there with someone other than your husband spoke volumes about the state of your marriage.

“Of course he doesn’t. He was off practicing his music with Dean and the other guys like he does every Friday night.” I tried to imagine Roland’s blood pressure readings if he had been privy to his wife’s goings-on. Felicia started sobbing even harder. I wondered how best to comfort her but, given my limited experience, didn’t feel competent to advise her on things marital or extramarital. And really, I was here to find out if she had killed Alanza, not to hear a confession about anything else. Her choice of bedmates had no bearing on my syrup-making business. Time to get back on track.

“So was this brought on by the stress of Alanza raising a ruckus next door to your place?” Felicia honked her nose delicately.

“What else would it be about?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never been in your situation.” I thought briefly about my mother and Lowell. What they were doing felt like they were betraying my father and he wasn’t even part of the picture anymore. How could anyone do something like that to someone who was still around to be hurt by it?

“It was all Alanza’s fault. For weeks all Roland could talk about was how everything we had worked for was being destroyed.”

“He did seem bitter about it all.”

“You don’t know the half of it. It was the first thing he said every morning, the last thing he said each night, and the only topic of conversation in the hours in between.”

“I can understand how you would be tempted to do something rash.”

“Yes, it was very unpleasant but mostly I was worried about Roland and his heart condition. I spent all my time monitoring him for signs of a stroke. It felt like living with a time bomb.” Now I was confused. It sounded like she could easily have had reason to do away with Alanza, but how did a secret rendezvous with another man help keep her husband from popping something in his brain? It sounded like she was trying to do away with him, too.

“Having an affair with Jim seems like a weird way to keep Roland from keeling over.” If I was butting my nose in, I might as well go all the way.

“An affair? With Jim?” Felicia’s tears turned off like the city was repairing the water main, and her shoulders began shaking even harder, but this time she was laughing.

“You did say you met with him at Loon Lodge and Roland didn’t know.” I felt my cheeks flushing. It wasn’t as if I wanted to discuss Felicia’s sex life. Or anyone else’s for that matter.

“I met him in the coffee shop to talk about putting our place on the market.” That explained it. Jim owned the most respected real estate brokerage in town and specialized in antique and choice properties.

“Without talking to Roland?”

“I wanted to run it past Jim first. If there wasn’t enough value left in our property, then I wasn’t going to mention the idea to him. If there was enough to sell up and put a hefty deposit down on another place, I was going to risk telling him.”

“It doesn’t seem like you told him since when I was here getting the pickles, he still seemed to think you had been at the quilting group.”

“Jim said with the real estate market the way it is and the destruction Alanza was planning on Bett’s Knob, we would be lucky to recoup our initial investment. There wouldn’t have been enough money to start over. We would be lucky to pay off the remaining mortgage once Jim took his commission.”

“So I guess it was lucky for you that Alanza died when she did.”

“It certainly was. I couldn’t believe our good fortune.” She made it sound so unconnected with her own actions. But was it really? And did Roland really not know where she had been, or was he just playing a part that provided both of them with alibis? And even if she were telling the truth, there would still have been time for her to slip into the grange hall and poison the syrup. She’d have even more reason than ever to do so.

“Roland looks better, too.”

“Oh, he is. Now he’s talking about new ways to plant the garden to distract people from the view of the storage facility and even adding some things like package deals for sugar-making weekends,
etc.
. . . He wanted to talk with you about it if you can ever reopen with all that’s been going on.” Felicia gave me a warm smile. It seemed that unburdening herself agreed with her. With so much new information heaped on my shoulders, why did I feel like I knew even less for sure than when I first started questioning her? Maybe talking with her husband about his own lies would be more enlightening.

• • •

Roland stood in the drizzle poking at a smoldering pile of brush
with a long green stick. The smoky wood smell rose up and hovered in the air, an autumnal country smell if ever there was one. My stomach clenched at the idea of confronting Roland about his lie, but there was no way I was losing my business because I had been taught to respect my elders at all costs. I was sure Grandma would understand.

He looked up at me as my feet came to a stop a little distance from him. His dark canvas jacket was smeared with soot and darkened in patches by the damp. I caught sight of someone’s outline in the kitchen window and waved. Even if Roland were a crazed poisoner, would he really do away with me right in front of his witness? I hoped she was squeamish or religious or something and he wouldn’t dream of upsetting her. I drew a deep breath and broached the topic. In a roundabout way. I had no desire to actually accuse him of lying. Especially if he was hiding the fact he committed a murder.

“Well, what brings you by this morning?” Roland waved his big hand in front of his florid face, and I hoped the color was due to the heat of the fire and not another bout of high blood pressure. I didn’t want to say anything to push him over the edge.

“I’ve been thinking about my business.”

“That’s the plight of the small business owner. You don’t realize it is going to consume you entirely. There ought to be a health warning when you file papers with the state to go into business for yourself.” Roland turned a bit of sizzling brush over with his stick and sparked a blaze.

“I’m sure you can imagine the news about Alanza hasn’t been too helpful for a company like mine.”

“Even when she’s dead, that woman is still messing things up for people around here.” Roland shook his head like a person who had seen too much in his time.

“I’m hoping things will get back on track for Greener Pastures just as soon as this whole mess gets cleared up about who was really responsible for putting the poison in the syrup.”

“Good attitude. I hope you find a way to turn things around. A good reputation is the best thing a company can have.”

“I hoped you’d say that. I have been thinking of some ways to bring people into the sugarhouse so they can see our operation firsthand and get to find out how clean and wholesome the place is, not at all the sort of place to worry about buying edibles. And that’s where I thought maybe you could help.”

“What is it that you need?”

“I thought since you guys are so popular at the Griddle and Fiddle, I might be able to convince your band to play at Greener Pastures at sugaring time. You guys really draw a crowd.” So maybe that was stretching things just a little, but they did sound good and he would have a hard time not feeling kindly toward me after I had slathered all that butter on him.

“I don’t know about drawing a huge crowd, but I like to think we are competent enough and our hearts are in the right place.”

“Don’t be so modest. You guys are the favorites every month at the Griddle and Fiddle. Dean tells me you even have a regular rehearsal schedule. That takes a commitment to your craft that goes above and beyond the casual players that account for most of the performers at the Stack.”

“I never thought of it that way. I guess we do make it a priority more than some.”

“And your efforts seem to really stick even when you don’t have the chance to get together. Like last Friday night.” Not the smoothest of segues but eventually I needed to get to the point or just get on home instead.

“We did practice last Friday night. We practice every Friday night.”

“But not this Friday. Dean told me you canceled and so they didn’t have practice.” Roland stabbed the stick he was holding into the center of the smoldering pile with enough savagery that it seemed he was imagining Alanza in there somewhere toasting to a crisp.

“No. Not this Friday. And I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything about it to Felicia.” Well, that was just getting better and better.

“I can’t promise something like that until I know what you were doing instead. You had a serious bone to pick with Alanza and that was exactly when the syrup was being poisoned.” Roland gave me a long look.

“You really do have the makings of a ruthless businessperson inside that diminutive package.”

“Thanks, I think. So where were you?”

“At a bar.”

“At a bar?” I felt sick to my stomach. Was every marriage I admired on the brink of disaster? “With another woman?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“So why can’t Felicia know?”

“I’ve been in AA for years. We always had the plan to open an inn, but Felicia finally told me one day that she was not going to go down that road to her dream life with a guy too drunk to help. If I wanted it, I was going to have to clean up and stay that way. When I hit five years’ sobriety, we celebrated by purchasing this place.”

“So what were you doing at the bar?” I held my breath. I didn’t think I wanted him to answer. Five years’ sobriety before the inn purchase plus the six since they bought the place was a long time to toe the line. I’d hate to know he blew it.

“I was sitting in my car trying to talk myself out of going in to drown my sorrows and to forget all about Alanza.”