Maple Mayhem (A Sugar Grove Mystery) (12 page)

“And this wasn’t hanging here then.”

“I would have been sure to see it if it had been.” Tansey was right. It was obvious as soon as your eyes adjusted to the low light.

“So someone could have strung it up while you were at the opera house Friday night. Or anytime yesterday?”

“I expect so. I doubt I was home when it happened though. The dogs would have let out a fuss if anyone had come by and I never heard nothing like that.” I wasn’t so sure. Tansey had a lot of faith in her dogs’ watchful prowess but they were getting on in years and I hadn’t noticed them being as alert as they had been in the past. I also didn’t think Tansey’s hearing was what it used to be, so even if the dogs kicked up some dust she wouldn’t necessarily notice.

Still, the time frame was narrowed down at least a bit. Everyone in town knew Tansey wouldn’t miss meat bingo unless she was hospitalized. And Tansey hadn’t even been born in a hospital. Friday night would have been a perfect time to sneak into her barn undetected.

“What did Knowlton say?” Knowlton, of course, never missed meat bingo so the person responsible would have expected to find the place empty. But if it had happened early maybe Knowlton himself was involved. Maybe he was playing a joke on his mother. The dogs wouldn’t have barked at him and he wouldn’t have needed to sneak onto the site. But he was too devoted to his mother to scare her like that and I would be very surprised for him to say anything bad about my family, especially considering how long he had been trying to marry into it.

“I don’t expect he knows about this since I haven’t seen him all day. I’m not sure what he’s up to.”

“That doesn’t sound like Knowlton. If anything he tends to you almost too well.” Part of Knowlton’s problem in the romance department was the way he prioritized his life. Topping the list was spending time with Tansey, followed closely by his abiding love of taxidermy. Stalking Celadon and me came in third. Any woman would have to be content with whatever was left over.

“He’s been making himself scarce since he lost at bingo to that game warden.” Tansey gave me a look that said I had somehow rigged the bingo cage. “He keeps going on about how he’ll never be able to compete with that other guy’s sausage.” There was no way I could respond to that so I changed the subject.

“I think you had better call the police and let them know about this. Probably you should try to locate Knowlton because if Mitch bothers to take this seriously, he is sure to want to question him, too.”

“What do you mean question him? Like they would suspect him of wrongdoing?” Tansey stepped her stance wide and stuck her beefy hands on her matronly hips. I was glad I hadn’t asked her about Knowlton’s potential involvement.

“No, of course not. I just meant as a possible witness to anything odd that might have happened here. Anything that might help to identify who did this.”

“Mitch’s too busy singlehandedly running the police department to go worrying him about something like this.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t have anything more important to investigate than this.” Maybe if he had something else to investigate, he would stop thinking about me filching a police car.

“There’s nothing to investigate. We both know it was Frank, up to his usual rabble-rousing and troublemaking. This time he just got even more carried away.”

“We can’t be sure it was Frank.”

“Who else has had one bad thing to say about the co-op? He’s the only one in the whole town who tried to discourage it; the only one who didn’t join.”

“That doesn’t mean he was responsible for this. Frank is difficult to deal with and a big blowhard but he hasn’t ever hurt anyone as far as I know.” I didn’t want to fan her fire by telling her how frightened of Frank I had been when I went to recruit him for the co-op. Or how he had pointed a gun at Luke Collins the night before.

“Oh it’s Frank. Of that you can be certain. He’s been a mess for years and he’s getting worse with age. The man won’t even acknowledge he knows a body when he runs into them at the post office. And I do mean runs into. He crashed right into me the other day and didn’t even grunt out an apology. Not even when he saw that he spilled my mail left, west, and crooked.”

“If he’s gotten as bad as you say, there’s nothing we can do besides call the police.”

“No matter what, I still know it’s Frank and there is no way that crotchety excuse for a man is going to scare me off from the cooperative.”

“I’m relieved to hear you say that. The rumors about this are sure to whip through the town faster than head lice at an elementary school. If you drop out, others are sure to follow and then there won’t be a cooperative anymore.”

“No straw dolly is going to keep me from saving money on my sugaring supplies. I work too hard for my earnings and any way I can legally save a bit is fine by me.” Tansey had been barely scraping by on the farm ever since forever. Knowlton’s father was never a part of the picture as far as I heard and she had to work the whole place alone. It couldn’t have been easy and was probably one of the reasons my grandparents held her in such high esteem.

Tansey had been an older mother for a woman of her generation and Knowlton was something of a miracle baby. She was forty-five by the time he came on the scene and I expect she was pretty surprised by the whole situation. I know it caused a lot of talk in town. No one ever really figured out who Knowlton’s father was. There was a lot of speculation but Tansey never talked about it and I don’t think even my grandmother knew. I’m sure she never asked.

“You still need to give Mitch a call. I’ll tell you what: If you get him over here to check this out, I’ll go up and speak to Frank. I don’t feel good about someone doing this to you and getting away with it.”

“Now that’s sweet, you know it is. That’s just the sort of girl I want for a daughter-in-law. Knowlton’s right to pursue you the way he does even if you are giving him a merry chase.”

“That’s nice of you to say, Tansey. Did you ever find that phone you were looking for? I’m not sure my cell phone will work out here.” I wanted to get back home as soon as possible. Ham is fine reheated but I was hungry now and talk about Knowlton made me queasy instead of hungry. Besides, there was nothing to be gained by discussing any sort of romantic interest Knowlton had in me. Even if the threat hadn’t driven Tansey from the cooperative, insulting Knowlton’s eligibility just might. Not to mention how much I wanted to be sure to take off before Mitch arrived.

“It’s in my pocket. You’ll go up to Frank’s?” I nodded. “Well then, let’s get the boy wonder over here.” Tansey peered closely at the grubby handset and poked at the numbers. Even from a goodly distance, in a barn that acted as a wind tunnel, Myra Phelps’s voice came through loud and clear. After telling Myra to let Mitch know she had a slice of her famous apple pie with his name on it sitting on her kitchen counter she disconnected without a good-bye.

“He’ll be here any minute. I expect after what I hear about you stealing Lowell’s police cruiser you’d rather be gone before Mitch shows up.”

“I’d rather head over to Frank’s than to run into Mitch. You should have seen the gleam in his eye when he saw me pulling out in Lowell’s cruiser.”

“That boy has loved slapping people in cuffs since he was just a bitty little thing. I remember him handcuffing Knowlton to the merry-go-round when they were in elementary school. Mitch gave the thing a shove and it dragged my poor Knowlton around three or four times before a teacher put a stop to it.” Tansey shook her head slowly like she still couldn’t believe it. I remembered the incident quite clearly.

Tansey would be distressed to realize how long it had taken for the teacher on duty to respond even after she spotted Knowlton whipping around the piece of playground equipment like a can tied on the back of a groom’s car. Knowlton had a crush on the teacher and kept leaving gifts of dead creatures in her desk drawers. Maybe she thought the spinning would knock some sense into him. Or even better, give him amnesia. In the distance I heard the wail of a police siren.

“Okay, that’s my cue to go. I need you to stall Mitch for a bit. He’s sure to think Frank is involved and he’ll head right up there and then I’ll end up running into him anyway.”

“I’ll do my best to keep him here. That apple pie just might hold him for a while.” Great. Not only was I going to be delayed even longer from my own lunch than I had planned, Mitch was going to be bellying up to some of Tansey’s award-winning pie. I thought about asking her for a doggy bag with a piece for me but the siren was getting louder. I jumped into the Clunker and floored it. Which meant, I was barely down the driveway and around the bend in the opposite direction when I heard Mitch and his accompanying wail too close for comfort.

It was one thing to send a dog after me. It was another entirely to mess with my business. I’m a patient woman, probably even too meek and mild when it comes to confrontation. But if you manage to push the right buttons, my temper scares even me. Sabotaging trees, threatening the elderly, and sending out dogs to bite me were on the list of button pushes. I peeled away from Tansey’s so fast the Clunker went airborne as soon as I hit the first frost heave. Even the car crashing back down to earth didn’t convince me to take it slow and calm down.

All the way to Frank’s place I rehearsed the sorts of things I would say to him. My fear of his dog went right out the window as the miles slipped behind me. By the time I pulled into his driveway and yanked on the emergency break, I had worked myself up into an under-five-foot-tall rage volcano.

Someone else looked like rage had gotten the better of him, too. Bob Sterling almost backed into my car as he reversed his own and took off down the driveway as quickly as I had come up it. I raised my hand in greeting but he just grimaced at me and kept both of his hands wrapped tightly on the wheel instead of the usual New Hampshire wave, which involves lifting just one finger up in acknowledgment of an acquaintance.

I wondered what could have gotten under Bob’s skin as I raced up the steps of Frank’s dilapidated porch, kicking aside a soda can and a bungee cord left in front of the door. I pounded as hard as I could on the door, flakes of peeling paint showered down with each blow of my fist. Frank’s dog was the only one to answer my call. He barked and whined from the inside of the house and even jumped up on his hind legs to see who was out there making a fuss.

Despite my tough talk in the safety of the Clunker, I backed away as I noticed the dog was taller than me. But he was inside the house and I was safely on the outside. If Frank wasn’t going to answer, it was likely he wasn’t home. He wasn’t exactly hospitable but he was eager to shoo people off his property. I went round the back of the house to see if there was any evidence of him there. Rusted cars and old oil drums poked up out of snowdrifts and brush. Some sort of a rusty engine sat in pieces on a splintery picnic table. But no sign of Frank.

I moved to the edge of the woods, toward where he might have entered if he wanted to sabotage Jill’s trees. I stood silently listening for rustling or birdcalls that would indicate someone was nearby. I called out his name but no one answered. It occurred to me that Phoebe ought to be around here somewhere even if Frank wasn’t. The last time I had been here they had been fighting but I hadn’t heard that she had moved out or anything. And I had spoken to Myra since then so I would have heard. Myra knows all, sees all. With Myra around it is a wonder the police in Sugar Grove don’t have a hundred percent clearance rate on cases.

Anger is not the most reliable form of fuel for me and I started to feel its strength ebbing away as I turned the corner of the house. A jay called from a tree above my head and when I looked up to spot it I noticed smoke rising from behind the sugarhouse. It was then I thought about letting myself into Frank’s sugarhouse. I walked past the woodpile that had been dug into recently. Several sticks of stove wood stood out of line compared with the rest of the pile. A few pieces lay on the ground in front as though someone had left them where they tumbled when they hastily grabbed some wood.

I pounded on the door of the sugarhouse and waited more patiently than I would have expected. Then I thought about the trees at Jill’s again and about the dummy swinging from Tansey’s rafters and I tried the doorknob. I let myself in and crept cautiously forward.

Frank’s sugarhouse looked nothing like the rest of what I had seen of the property. Shelves lined the walls with things neatly lined up on top of them. Cupboards had doors with hinges that didn’t sag. The floor was swept clean. Everything was just the way I’d keep it myself at Greener Pastures except for one thing. The room was hot. Too hot to be attributed to a normal heating system.

The smoke I had seen had to have been created by something and I was beginning to wonder if the sugarhouse was on fire. With more curiosity than sense I moved farther into the room, looking for the source of the heat. As I approached the evaporator the temperature shot up.

The evaporator in a sugarhouse can take many forms, from something cobbled together from found objects to state-of-the-art equipment. But the basic construction remains the same. You need a shallow pan with a lot of surface area suspended over a source of heat. In order to turn sap into syrup you need to remove a whole lot of water. During the sugaring season the evaporator ran almost constantly at Greener Pastures. But we never ran it outside of sugaring season. No one would want to waste the fuel. And it wasn’t yet sugaring season. The nights were certainly cold but the days were nowhere near warm enough to start the sap flowing. I couldn’t imagine why Frank would have had a fire going in his firebox. He might have had a lot of character flaws but being a spendthrift wasn’t one of them.

“Frank?” I called out. “Are you in here?” I stepped around the evaporator with its empty sap pan and tripped, sending myself sprawling across the concrete floor. My elbow smarted and I’d ripped a hole in the knee of my only clean pair of jeans. I would have spent some time feeling sorry for myself on both counts if my attention weren’t riveted on Frank. His eyes were open and staring straight at me but I was pretty sure they weren’t seeing a thing. From the bits of bark trapped in the bloody dent in the back of his head I was more than certain he wasn’t ever going to look at anything again. I scrambled back from his body and bolted to the other side of the evaporator. Sucking down deep hot breaths of the overheated air, I tried to tell myself to remain calm.

Apparently I am not much of a salesperson. By the time I got my fingers to work well enough to operate my cell phone and dialed Myra at the police station I was gulping down hiccupy gasps and had trouble making myself understood. She must have made out the word
Frank
and identified my number as the one calling. Myra may be a first-class gossip but she is an equally good dispatcher.

In under ten minutes Mitch was skidding the town’s newest cruiser to a stop in Frank’s driveway, lights and flashers both announcing his arrival. He burst in through the door, one hand on his gun holster. I took one look at him and after valiantly trying to hold it in, I burst into tears.

I’d like to say it was because of the lack of sleep, the stress of the cooperative, and the pent-up emotion of being so angry but I think I was just rattled. Thoroughly and completely rattled. Sure, I’d seen dead bodies before. People at funerals, people in movies, even a murder victim only a couple of months earlier but none of them had looked like they had been the victims of violence. I kept seeing the back of Frank’s head with his fringe of graying hair matted with blood. Mitch wrapped his long arms around me and gave me a couple experimental pats on the back like I was a baby he was trying to burp. I pulled myself together and then pulled away.

“Frank’s right over there.” I pointed to the other side of the evaporator and noticed the baseball cap Frank always wore lying abandoned on the floor. Mitch crossed the room and squatted. When he stood back up he looked a bit rattled himself. It might have been the lighting but I thought he had a distinctly green tinge to his face.

“He’s dead all right, that’s for sure. Can you explain what you were doing in here?” Mitch took a step toward me and turned his back to the evaporator and to Frank. Maybe being aggressive was easier than feeling scared. Especially if you were in charge of a crime scene.

“I came to ask Frank about the sabotage to my car and to Jill’s and Tansey’s places. You know, the stuff you were too busy to investigate until pie was involved.”

“With Lowell away I’ve had more important things to do than to worry about infighting between local businesses.”

“Well it looks to me like the sabotaging just got to be your number one priority. Especially since Lowell is out of town. Maybe if you had taken it more seriously something like this wouldn’t have happened.”

“This isn’t my fault. And you still haven’t said exactly what you were doing here. Were you accusing him of sabotage or did you want to warn him it could happen to him, too?” Mitch crossed his arms over his chest and gave me the same look he had when he was preparing to pat me down in front of the Stack earlier in the week. It was a good question though. I hadn’t even thought about the possibility that Frank’s place could have been targeted, too.

“I was going to confront him. Just about everybody thought Frank was the one trying to warn people off the cooperative by messing with their properties.”

“And?”

“And, after I saw the dummy in Tansey’s barn I drove straight up here to tell Frank off. I was so mad I was getting light-headed on the drive over.”

“Mad enough to kill him?” Mitch towered over me and I was glad to hear the ambulance in the near distance. He didn’t look like someone I wanted to be alone with for much longer.

“I was mad but I don’t think I’m even tall enough to have hit him. And I very much doubt I’m strong enough. Besides, the evaporator was heating away and Frank was on the floor when I arrived.”

“You look like you’ve been in a bit of a tussle. Can you explain that?” Mitch pointed at the hole in my jeans and the scrapes on my hands.

“I tripped over Frank’s body and banged myself up when I hit the concrete floor. From the bark I saw caught in the trough in the back of his head it looks like he was coshed with a stick of stove wood.” I felt myself getting a little hysterical, like I might start laughing inappropriately. All I could picture was a maple tree uprooting itself and wandering over to hit Frank upside the head with one of its branches for girdling Jill’s trees. That wasn’t going to go down well with Mitch though.

“A likely story.”

“It’s the truth. That would explain the evaporator being on, too. I bet whoever killed him put the stick of stove wood into the evaporator and lit a fire in the box to destroy the evidence.”

“You seem to know a lot about this for someone who claims not to have been involved.”

“I doubt someone would need to be involved in this crime to make the same suggestion.” I wished more than ever that Lowell was in town instead of frolicking on a cruise ship with my mother. Mitch had been looking for any excuse to get back at me for the failure of our lackluster romance. Suspecting me of murder was about as good a way to get back at someone as I could think of. While Mitch was not the smartest guy I had ever met, he wasn’t dumb either. If I could give him some other viable suspects, he would certainly look at them, too. “Besides, there are plenty of people in Sugar Grove who hated Frank.”

“That may be true but people have had problems with Frank for years. Why kill him now?”

“Last night Frank pointed his shotgun at Luke Collins for crossing his property line. When Mindy heard about it she threatened to kill him if it ever happened again.”

“Did Frank threaten her kid again?”

“Not that I know of but I haven’t been with her since this morning. Anything could have happened since then.”

“Seems unlikely to me. You still seem like a better suspect since you’re right here on the spot.”

“What about Bob Sterling? As I pulled into the driveway this afternoon I saw him hauling out of here like his backside was on fire.”

“Bob? What reason would he have to hurt Frank?”

“Bob was saying at meat bingo on Friday night that Frank’s dispute about the property line was keeping him from selling his land. He was really angry about it.”

“And he was here when you got here?” Mitch uncrossed his arms, which I took to be a good sign.

“He was. And from the sounds of things, he’s about to be here again.” The sirens of the ambulance had grown so loud I was certain it had arrived. Sure enough, the door to Frank’s sugarhouse opened and Bob stood there with Cliff Thompson, the fire chief and part-time EMT.

“Keep that under your hat for now.” Mitch tilted his head toward Bob ever so slightly then lowered his voice. “I don’t want to have to slap the cuffs on Bob before he gets the body dealt with.”

“Does this mean I’m not a suspect anymore?” I felt a glimmer of hope and lightness for the first time since tripping over Frank’s corpse.

“Nope. It doesn’t even mean I’ve forgotten about you stealing Lowell’s cruiser. It just means you should be quiet. I’m sure I’ll have more questions for you later. For now, I want you to wait outside.”

Without another word, I scooted past Mitch and Frank and the others. I was glad to get out into the cold fresh air in the yard. I sucked down several deep breaths before I saw Phoebe rounding the corner of the house. She was coming from the direction of the woods beyond the clearing surrounding the house and outbuildings near the drive. Her pale blond hair was all pinned up on her head in a way I had never seen before. I watched as she spotted the ambulance and her pace quickened.

“What’s going on here?” she asked.

“Phoebe, I have some very bad news for you.” Frank, for all his faults, had been a better father to Phoebe than her biological one had ever bothered to try to be. This was going to hurt and having lost my own father, I understood exactly how much.