Maple Mayhem (A Sugar Grove Mystery) (16 page)

I heard a voice calling faintly from somewhere in the house and I took that as a sign to let myself in. After all, the Collins family only had cats, no dogs. After the terrors of Beau I thought it unlikely I was going to be intimidated by a tabby. As I entered the hallway littered with shoes and backpacks I heard the voice call out again.

“I’m in here but I’m not getting up.” I followed the sound and ended up in the cluttered living room. Russ lay stretched on the couch, the remote in his hand, a bowl of what smelled like barbecue-flavored chips perched on his stomach. “Dani, what a surprise. Did you forget something after the campout?”

“No. Actually, I wanted to ask you about getting a quote for a job we need done up at Greener Pastures.” I noticed Russ scootching up just a bit, like he had forgotten his back trouble.

“What kind of a job?”

“I’m thinking of expanding to add a screened porch to the sugarhouse shop so we can serve afternoon tea in the summer. I thought of you immediately.” Which wasn’t true. I had thought of Wesley Farnum, the master builder the Greene family had trusted with everything for years but telling him that wasn’t going to help get the answers I wanted about the vandalism at Kenneth Shaw’s.

“Sounds like a good-sized job. When were you thinking of starting it?” Russ forgot his back a little more as he turned a bit to look at me.

“That will depend on the weather of course. It would be an outside job after all. So the snow will be a factor.”

“And frozen ground.”

“And you’ll be too busy with the sugaring this year to mess around with a building project. So after the sugaring season is over, I’d say.”

“Of course.”

“So are you interested?”

“Of course I’m interested. A man has to provide for his family, doesn’t he?” Russ dug into the bowl of chips and stuffed a handful into his mouth.

“I hate to do this but I’ll need to ask for references.”

“But you know me.” He was right about that. I knew he wasn’t likely to get any good ones from anyone in town but after filling in for him on Saturday night at the Squirrel Squad campout it was a pleasure to watch him squirm. Besides, how better to introduce the dispute with Kenneth and the possible vandalism.

“Of course I do, but it’s a matter of evenhandedness. In a small town like Sugar Grove it’s easy for people to get hurt feelings, especially where business is concerned. I always ask everyone so no one can be offended.”

“How big a job did you say it would be?” Russ popped some more chips in his mouth and ground them around with his mouth hanging open.

“I was thinking maybe eight hundred square feet, possibly a bit bigger. And we’ll need steps, railing, and garden beds built in along the front to blend it in with the surroundings. Visual appeal is a big part of the success factor for this type of venture.” Unfortunately I could almost see the spit forming in his open mouth as the numbers he was adding up in his head were making it water.

“I guess I could rustle up a few references. It sounds like the project could be worth my while.”

“Something from one of the other sugarhouses would be especially helpful. Didn’t you do some work for the Shaws not too long ago?”

“I know I haven’t done any work for him in his sugarhouse.”

“I’m sure Kenneth mentioned you were doing work for him. He said something about it the other day when I was there talking to him about the cooperative. I just wish I could remember what the project was.”

“I’d have to look over my records.” Russ slid back down and drew the bowl of chips up higher on his chest, obscuring his face a bit.

“I know. I remember now. It was a flooring job wasn’t it?”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“I think I heard maybe it didn’t go so well.” That got Russ’s attention.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Kenneth mentioned it himself.”

“Did he tell you he pulled out after I had already spent time on that job? He refused to pay me, too. I ought to have sued him, put a lien on his property.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“It wouldn’t have been worth all the legal fees. But one day someone’s gonna show that guy.”

“What do you mean show him?”

“I mean, someone is gonna take him down a peg. He struts around like the king of Sugar Grove. Being a selectman doesn’t entitle you to lord over everyone else. Having more money than a dog has fleas doesn’t either. That guy needs to be shown he can’t just push people around and get away with it.”

“Maybe someone already has taught him a lesson,” I said, wondering if I really ought to spread the gossip about the Shaws’ museum or if I had better remain quiet. I decided if Myra heard about it, and she would have, everyone else would, too.

“What kind of lesson?”

“Someone stole most of the items in his museum and scrawled graffiti on the walls where the art hung.” I watched his face carefully for signs of guilt. I’m not sure if he looked guilty but he certainly seemed pleased if the smile splitting his face from ear to ear meant anything.

“That sounds like just about the best way to stick it to the old boy. I wish I’d thought of it myself.” Russ completely forgot about his back injury and popped straight up and leaned toward me.

“Are you sure you didn’t think of it?”

“What are you implying?”

“The police are going to be looking for someone who had a dispute with Frank and you are bound to be at the top of their list.”

“Why me? There had to be tons of people with a problem with Kenneth. What about Frank? He hated Kenneth’s guts.”

“The time frame for Frank to have done it is pretty tight. Frank was probably dead too close to the time the vandalism occurred.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not absolutely positive but it would have been nearly impossible. Where were you on Sunday?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Of course you don’t. But you will have to tell Mitch where you were. And if you don’t tell me, I’m going to mention to Mindy how glad she must be that your back is completely healed. I’m sure she has all kinds of things you could be doing around here. I hear another snowstorm is due in and it looks to me like someone needs to do a better job shoveling a path to the house.”

“I was here the whole time.”

“Are you sure? Did you sneak out for snacks like one of those bags of chips?”

“No. I was here from Saturday afternoon until now.”

“Thanks for that, by the way. I can’t think of anything I would have rather been doing than filling in for your sorry, lazy self at a winter campout.”

“I was happy to get out of it, I can tell you. It was nice to be at home having a bit of peace and quiet for a change. You don’t know what it’s like around here with all the kids running around and yelling nonstop.”

“You didn’t leave for any reason?”

“How could I? Mindy might have seen me or heard about it from someone else and then I would have had to have helped with the campout.”

“No chance you could have snuck off?”

“Mindy was right on the other side of the property. How could I risk her coming to check on me or sending one of the kids?”

He was right about the risk of being spotted. But what if Mindy did know he was faking his back injury? What if she was giving him a way to take care of his grudge against Kenneth? Or even worse, what if he was the one who killed Frank? If he didn’t have an alibi for the time of the vandalism up at the Shaws he didn’t have one for the time of Frank’s murder either.

With one of my preferred suspects questioned I decided to turn my attention to the other. In light of my earlier conversation with Piper I was especially eager to speak with Dean. If his girlfriend wasn’t even sure he didn’t damage his property to serve his own ends, then I felt he merited careful consideration. The fact that he stood between Loden and Piper only made me more eager to chat with him.

But I still needed an excuse to ask him about his whereabouts yesterday afternoon and evening. I knew he couldn’t have been working because the hardware store was closed on Sundays. And I knew he didn’t go to church but that would only have been in the morning anyway. I wished I had known about the timing of the vandalism at Kenneth’s place when I was at the Stack. I should have asked Piper if Dean was with her in the afternoon. I doubted it very much since Piper generally worked all day on Sundays and Dean didn’t hang around the Stack too often.

Piper never liked her men to bother her at work. She liked to keep her attention on her customers, and boyfriends often seemed to have the impression that they were the most important customers of all. During business hours Piper did not agree with them. For her, every customer was the most important customer. Piper’s food was great and the atmosphere was a delight but it was Piper’s warm and friendly welcome and personal attention that really kept her in business. Which would be hard to provide with a needy boyfriend hanging around clamoring for attention.

I pulled into the parking lot at Village Hardware and slid into the spot right next to Dean’s electric blue Jeep. I expected to find him slouched over the counter as usual, working a sudoku puzzle but found him instead in the gardening aisle sweeping up a pile of spilled fertilizer from a split bag. The air reeked of the chemicals and Dean didn’t look too happy with his task. I expected he wouldn’t be too happy with me before too long either if I didn’t figure out a way to poke into his business without letting him know why I was asking.

“Hey, Dani. Did you need something?” he asked, stopping his sweeping in mid swish. With service like that I hated to suspect him of anything worse than not being the right guy for Piper.

“I wondered if you have any of those timers for electronics. You know, the kind you plug a lamp into so it will turn on when you aren’t home but want to make it look like you are?”

“Now why would you want a thing like that? Someone’s always home at your house.” Dean looked genuinely surprised.

“It’s for the sugarhouse. We’ve had a break-in.” I watched his face carefully, looking for signs of guilt. I wished I had thought to bring either Grandma or Celadon along for the questioning. No one spots the faintest flicker of guilt like a mother. I’ve gotten better over the years, with all the babysitting I do for my niece and nephew, at noticing signs of a troubled conscience but I still consider myself an amateur. Grandma has a black belt in lie detection and Celadon is catching up fast.

“A break-in? Here in Sugar Grove? That’s crazy.”

“There have been a lot of unusual things going on lately.”

“Tell me about it. Knowlton was in talking about the dummy dangling in the barn up at their place. Frank went and got himself murdered. What’s next?” I wondered if I should flat out mention the vandalism at Kenneth’s to try to gauge his reaction. I might learn that he already knew about it but I would give him more negative things to say about the cooperative if he didn’t. In the end, getting to the bottom of the trouble at the Shaws’ was more important so I decided to risk it.

“The Shaws’ Maple Museum was vandalized, too.” I kept my eyes fixed firmly on his but I felt like I had no idea if he was truly surprised or just faking it because he seemed excited more than anything else.

“No way! Not the Shaws. It took some kind of guts to mess with old Ken’s place.” I wasn’t sure if Dean was admiring someone else or bragging about himself but I was sure I had never before heard anyone call Kenneth Shaw
Ken
. He wasn’t a nicknames guy. I had heard people occasionally lengthen his name to Lord Kenneth or His Majesty Lord Shaw. I had even overheard someone mentioning the possibility that Kenneth thought Shaw was really Shah like it was in Iran.

Dean’s attitude reminded me that he had been in the same grade at school with Kenneth’s son, Jeremy, and that the boys had gotten into some trouble together as teenagers. Maybe Dean was still resentful. After all, Jeremy was raised by a pair of well-respected parents with a great deal of money and Dean navigated the potholes of adolescence with the help of a grief-stricken older sister barely above the poverty line. There may have been more hostility pointed at the Shaws than I had first considered.

“Especially on a Sunday. I think crimes on a Sunday get extra badness points.”

“Yesterday, huh? It must not have been a football fan doing the damage.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Every football fan I know of would have been home watching the games. The Super Bowl’s coming up soon.” I’m not a big television sports fan, I never have been. The only function of sports on television as far as I’m concerned is to give a good excuse to make couch-friendly snacks. That means things that don’t require flatware and shouldn’t be likely to leave traces of themselves on the furniture. Sports snacks require creativity and I like that. But I could not care less about the competition or the rules or the sweating. The sweating actually puts me off my snacks and I am definitely not a big fan of losing my appetite.

I’m too scared of wasting away to nothing to want that to happen. Don’t get me wrong, I loved gymnastics as a child. I love to ice-skate and to go hiking. I love all sorts of physical activities. What I don’t love is sitting around watching others being active.

“I guess that includes you then.” Maybe I would be able to find out what he was up to without coming right out and accusing him of the vandalism. Or Frank’s murder.

“I was glued right to my television from noon until well after nine last night.”

“That’s a lot of hours. And I thought baseball games took forever.” As a kid I spent endless hours climbing around on the bleachers at Loden’s interminable ball games, trying to outwit or outrun hoards of blackflies.

“I was hopping around to different channels catching the action on different games. Then there are the commentaries afterward. Plus, I spotted a horror movie on one of the classic channels that I couldn’t pass up the chance to watch.”

“Jill doesn’t mind the television being on for so many hours in a row? I know my family wouldn’t be able to stand it.” That was the truth. We hardly ever had the thing on. As a matter of fact we had the smallest television of anyone I know and it is left in the draftiest, least comfortable room in the house. The television room actually makes Loden’s train room seem well thought out and comfortable.

It’s down at the end of the back hall on the first floor. The fireplace is the only source of heat and the chimney that serves it doesn’t draw right so the smoke has a tendency to back up into the room. The only furniture allowed in there are pieces cast off from other rooms. Consequently, all the chairs have broken springs and the tables have wobbly legs. We don’t have any of the cable or satellite services so reception is terrible at best. The only time I really ever watched television was over at Piper’s house when we were kids. I have no interest in it now. Maybe it’s one of those things you have to develop a taste for, like Moxie.

In contrast, the family library is toasty in the winter, cool in the summer, and is furnished with the most comfortable seats in the house. Wingback chairs with ottomans and big squishy sofas dot the room. Floor-to-ceiling gleaming maple bookshelves line the walls and are simply stuffed with books of every genre. The floors are carpeted with wool rugs in rich, deep colors.

In a newer wing of the house, positioned far away from the library, so as not to be disruptive, there’s also a game room with a regulation pool table, casino tables, and a dedicated puzzle table. Any board game, card game, or nonelectronic table game you might wish for is available. My grandparents love fun, they just don’t like television. I almost forget it exists.

“Jill wasn’t home. She was off shopping all day with a friend from out of town. They went all the way to the mall in Nashua. Which is a place you might have to go to find the timer device you are looking for since we don’t have one here.”

“Thanks anyway. I’ll keep looking around closer to home first.” Nashua is over an hour away and I had no desire to head out of town if I could spend my dollars in the community instead. Back in the Clunker I had to decide what my next move would be. It wasn’t going to be easy to prove Dean hadn’t been watching the games. All the scores were available online along with commentary on the highlights. Besides, he could have recorded anything he wanted and watched it later. No one had to watch anything in real time anymore.

But Jill wasn’t home and no one else lived with them so he could easily be lying. I didn’t feel like our conversation had been all that helpful but at least I hadn’t gotten his back up. I needed to think a bit more and I also decided to drop in at the police station to report the break-in at Greener Pastures. I wanted to put in a claim to the insurance company in case the computer needed to be replaced rather than repaired.

*   *   *

Myra was stationed at her desk in her typical style, eyes and ears peeled for gossip and drama, arms and legs exposed by her choice of stretch knit shorts and tank tops no matter what the weather. She looked up with that hungry glint in her eye I’ve seen her get at community events and the post office. She has an otherworldly knack for scenting news before it takes wing. I could just tell she was smelling it on me like I had rolled in something dead.

“So what brings you in today, Dani? Conscience get the better of you and you’re here to confess to murder?” She pitched her voice low like she didn’t want to share the moment with Mitch if that was the reason for my visit. Myra was wasted on the phones. She ought to be the one out doing the investigating instead of Mitch, or even Lowell if he had been home to fulfill his duties instead of sailing the high seas with my mother.

“No, sorry. I would like to file a report concerning some property damage.”

“The Shaws have already taken care of their own report. Mitch is up there right now investigating.” So she hadn’t been trying to keep Mitch from hearing her. I wondered who else might be in the office instead. “No need to be a busybody now is there?” That took some gall coming from her. Maybe I ought to give her a bit of a tease.

“Actually it was for some business of my own but if Mitch isn’t here, I guess I’ll have to come back later.”

“Oh you poor thing.” Myra came out from behind the desk, her flabby thighs rubbing together below the hem of her shorts as she hurried to steer me into the chair opposite her desk.

“It’s fine. I can just drop in another time. I’m sure I can contact the insurance company without a police report filed first.” I could almost see the holes in her ears stretching and straining, waiting for the news. If ears could grumble like stomachs do, she would have lost an eardrum from the racket.

“Park it, short stuff. Mitch will be here soon. I know he wasn’t planning to stay a minute longer than he can help. Kenneth makes that boy sweat.” Myra pushed down on my shoulders to stuff me into the visitor’s chair and then pushed it toward the desk like she was moving a child close enough to reach the table at dinnertime. If she wanted to remind me of how easily she could push me around, she had surely done so. I gave up.

“The sugarhouse at Greener Pastures was broken into.”

“Anything stolen?”

“Files and catalogs, any printed materials to do with the cooperative I’ve been trying to start to support the local sugar makers.”

“Somebody was going on about that at church yesterday. I can’t seem to remember who though. Why would anyone want all that stuff? It doesn’t seem valuable.”

“It isn’t, in itself. The catalogs are all available for free. Anyone could get them. The bigger problem was the theft of the printouts I had prepared for potential members about the cooperative. How it would work, what the costs would be, that sort of thing.”

“Can’t you just print out another batch of papers? That doesn’t seem like something to go wasting police time about when we’re shorthanded and in the middle of a homicide investigation.”

“I would if someone hadn’t gone and cut off the power cord to my computer.”

“Well why didn’t you say that first?” Myra dug into a desk drawer for a box of chocolates. She lifted the lid and slid it across the desk at me. “Have one. It’ll make you feel better.” I looked over the selection hoping for a dark chocolate covered caramel.

“I am kicking myself for not taking the problems at Tansey’s and Jill’s seriously enough to at least bother to lock the door to the sugarhouse.”

“I don’t think you ought to be so hard on yourself. You know almost no one locks their doors around here. We’re experiencing an unprecedented crime wave. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Mitch was behind it all just to have something to brag about to Lowell when he gets back.”