Maple Mayhem (A Sugar Grove Mystery) (18 page)

“You wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings by lying to me now would you?” I felt dirty, playing that sort of card myself but I needed to know why he was there and he didn’t seem inclined to just offer it up.

“You know how I feel about you, Dani.”

“Yes, you’ve never lied about that.”

“Myra was in here on Saturday night talking about you going on an overnight camping trip with that game warden guy.”

“Graham.”

“Yeah, that guy.” Knowlton scowled and I worried for a second he was actually going to spit on the floor right there in the Stack.

“How does this explain your visit to Frank’s place?”

“I thought if I could find proof that Frank was sabotaging the sugarhouses to try to stop the cooperative you’d think I was a hero. Then maybe you’d go camping with me instead of that other guy.”

“Aw, Knowlton, that’s really sweet. Did you see anything that linked Frank to the vandalism?”

“No. I didn’t. I was sneaking around all quiet-like looking for clues but there wasn’t anything to see but a bunch of broken-down junk in the yard and a messy woodpile.”

“The woodpile was in disarray when you were there?”

“Yup, it sure was. I remember thinking Frank wasn’t much good in my opinion but I wouldn’t have thought him so low as to not bother stacking his wood properly.”

“What time were you there?”

“Around noon, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I don’t wear a watch and I don’t have a cell phone so I usually rely on the sun. I think I remember it being about as high in the sky as it was going to get.”

“Was anyone else around? Did you run into Frank?”

“Nope, I didn’t see anyone until Bob Sterling drove up like a race car driver. No wonder he got hired to drive the ambulance. That guy can move.”

“So Frank never caught you sneaking around?”

“No. As a matter of fact, after a while I kind of forgot about being quiet. Then all of a sudden I heard Beau barking and clawing at the door from inside the house. But no one let him out to chase me.” Either Frank was already dead or Knowlton was lying up a storm. It was hard to tell since he was only sitting on one hand. If he was desperate enough to impress me that he would try to pin the vandalism on Frank was he also willing to bump him off to win my favor? Watching him watching me adoringly as I took a sip of my soup, I really couldn’t be sure. Even Piper didn’t offer an opinion.

After lunch I set out to break Dean’s alibi. Mountain View Food Mart is the largest seller of foodstuffs in Sugar Grove. In the growing season the farmers market has a larger offering of produce, meats, and even locally crafted cheeses but in the dead of winter it was the only game in town. The store has three checkout lanes and two aisles of beer and wine. Most of the prices are higher than you’d find down at a store in Concord or Manchester but most locals shop here anyway. The effort to go that far out of town isn’t worth the bother to most people and the community does like to support their own.

It was quiet. I only saw two other cars in the parking lot when I pulled in and one of them belonged to Tish Paquette, the cashier flicking through a magazine at checkout lane two. Tish had been in high school at the same time as Piper and me. She had started out two grades ahead and ended up graduating with our class.

Unluckily for me, she had been a bully who went out of her way to push me around all the years we were in elementary school. When I finally stood up to her one day on the school bus she lost her temper and bashed me over the head with her lunch box. The bus driver happened to look up just in time to see it. Tish was suspended for a week and her parents made her come to the house to apologize. She never forgave me.

Getting her help was going to require a little gray lie. I hurried to the bakery section and picked out a cranberry scone. I added a French cruller for good measure and waited until the only other customer in her line finished before approaching.

“Hey, Tish, just the person I wanted to see.” She held up the bag and counted the baked goods inside before punching some keys on the register.

“Why’s that?” Tish couldn’t have looked more bored if she were a fish in a bowl.

“I have a bet going with Dean Hayes.” That got her attention. Tish had dated Dean in high school and rumor had it she had expected them to marry as soon as she graduated. By the time she finally earned enough credits Dean had left his high school sweetheart far behind. “He says you have a memory like a steel trap. I said I didn’t believe him. He bet me you’d remember exactly what he bought in here on Sunday afternoon, right down to the very last item. I said no way you could do that.”

“How much did you bet him?”

“Fifty bucks.” Tish smiled with the same sort of glee she always had when she was about to dunk my head in the toilet or throw my homework in the cafeteria trash can.

“Say good-bye to your money, honey. He was in here right around one o’clock and bought a big bunch of fuchsia carnations, a bottle of our cheapest pink champagne, and a twelve-pack of our bargain brand of condoms.”

“Are you sure you aren’t making that up just to lose me my money?”

“I can find the register receipt and the store surveillance tape if you don’t believe me.” Tish crossed her arms across her ample chest and batted her clumpy eyelashes at me, all innocent-like.

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll pay up.”

“Be sure to tell Dean if he can’t think of a place to spend your money, I’d be free for dinner tomorrow night.” Tish turned back to her magazine and I grabbed my bag of baked goods. It was time to go looking for Dean.

*   *   *

Dean’s bright blue Jeep is easy to spot anytime of year but it really stands out against the snow. I had no trouble at all driving around downtown and finding him at the gas station filling up. I pulled into a spot near the gas station convenience store and waited for him to head inside to pay.

One of the things I didn’t like about Dean was his way of getting into trouble with money. He didn’t have a credit card because his credit was so poor, so I knew he’d be paying cash inside instead of at the pump like most people. Sure enough, he returned the nozzle to the pump and made for the store. I caught up with him at the back as he was stirring creamer into a jumbo cup of take-out coffee.

“Hey, Dean, coffee up at Piper’s not good enough for you?” I asked. His hand holding the cream shook and he spilled the powder all over the coffee station. It seemed like a guilty, startled reaction to a fairly innocent question. I had to wonder if anything else about my best friend wasn’t good enough for him anymore. Time to start digging.

“Now what makes you say that? I was here and needed a caffeine fix. This was just convenient.” Still, he didn’t meet my eyes when I grabbed a couple of napkins and handed them to him to facilitate the cleanup.

“I am just wondering if maybe you are not so happy with all the hours she works. A man can get pretty lonely spending his day off without the company of his girlfriend.”

“Nope. Piper is worth waiting for no matter how long we go between visits. Besides, I always have plenty to do on my days off without her.” He swept the creamer into a slim hand and made a show of focusing his attention anywhere but on me.

“So I’ve heard.”

“What do you mean?” Dean finally snuck a look at my face.

“You were seen at the grocery on Sunday when you said you were home watching the game. You bought a bouquet of carnations, a bottle of pink champagne, and a twelve-pack of bargain brand condoms.”

“Oh that. I forgot to mention going on a supply run before Piper got out of work. I wasn’t gone more than forty-five minutes, tops.”

“You headed out of town in the direction of Kenneth Shaw’s place.”

“Says who?”

“Are you denying it?”

“Maybe I am. Are you trying to blame me for the damage at the Shaws’ Maple Museum?”

“Should I be? I guess I’ll ask Piper how much she enjoyed the flowers and champagne.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“You are either a liar or the world’s least observant boyfriend. Piper is almost as allergic to carnations as she is to cheapness. You had no hope of needing that third purchase if you didn’t know not to make the first one. Or maybe you were trying to please someone else entirely.”

“I don’t have to talk to you about any of this.”

“No, you don’t. But as her best friend, I will have to talk to Piper about it. And I am going to assume you have no reason to try to stop me.”

“Don’t talk to Piper.” Dean’s skinny shoulders slumped. “I wasn’t buying anything at Mountain View for her.”

“I thought as much. So who was it for?”

“Chelsea Forcier. She lives over at Gull’s Rest.” New Hampshire is a state with a bit of an affordable housing challenge. We don’t have a broad-based tax of any kind. Not a sales tax, not an income tax. This makes the property taxes sky high in most communities. We do have a lot of mobile homes to serve the needs of people who just can’t afford that kind of taxation. Trailer parks like Gull’s Rest are easily explained. The interest in naming them things that are totally unsuitable for a landlocked housing development are not. All the names of the streets in Gull’s Rest are nautical, too. Streets like Rigging Road, Landlubber Lane and Anchors Away Avenue divide the large complex.

“You’re sneaking around on Piper with someone else?”

“It’s not quite like that exactly. Chelsea and I were together before Piper and I started seeing each other. I ran into her at the hardware store a couple of weeks ago and one thing led to another.”

“Does Piper know?”

“No. I don’t want to tell her anything until I decide if Chelsea is really the right woman for me.”

“Don’t you think if Piper was really the right woman for you, you wouldn’t have had any interest in giving a relationship with Chelsea a second chance?”

“I’m not ready to decide.”

“Well, I am. If you don’t tell Piper yourself by the end of the day, I’m going to. And don’t think shoving off that task onto me is going to make things any easier for you. Either way you will get an earful from Piper for being a cheating weenie.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were happy that I’ll be getting the boot from Piper.” Dean crossed his skinny arms over his chest and scowled at a woman who was trying to fix herself a cup of coffee at the counter.

“I’m never pleased to hear someone has betrayed my friend. But you’re not right for Piper and this will get her to realize that faster than just about anything else would have. I have to congratulate you on being efficient. No other boyfriend has managed not to last the whole winter.” With that I stepped away, leaving room for the poor woman who seemed to need her java. I was back in the Clunker before I had a sinking feeling. Just because Dean admitted to being with another woman on Sunday didn’t mean he hadn’t made time to stop in at the Shaws’ and do some damage.

*   *   *

I called Myra on the nonemergency line at the police station and asked her for Chelsea Forcier’s address. Myra wouldn’t give it to me until I promised to stop in later with a cruller from the Stack and news from the investigation. I toddled along with only the odd shudder coming from the wretched vehicle despite potholes and frost heaves that would count as sledding hills in parts of the Midwest. Within ten minutes I had rattled to a stop in a well-cleared driveway in front of a decently maintained trailer.

A young woman with a baby on her hip answered the door. The child was wrapped up in a fleecy garment my grandmother would have called a creeper. It held out its chubby little hand to offer me a soggy, bitten cracker. I had worked on my story on the way over, thinking I was going to feel hostile on Piper’s behalf. But all that evaporated and I decided the truth was the best strategy.

“Are you Chelsea?” I asked.

“I am. What can I do for you?” She tucked a stray bit of dirty-blond hair behind her ear and then hugged her baby closer to her chest.

“My name is Dani Greene and I am working with the police on a case. I wondered if I could speak to you for a moment to verify some information we’ve received.” Okay, maybe I wasn’t going to stick only to the truth in the very strictest sense. I may not have been working with the police but doing Mitch’s job for him was almost the same thing.

“Come on in. I just started a fresh pot of coffee. Do you want some?” She stepped back to allow me to enter and I nodded. “Hold Cyan for a minute then while I fetch it.” She handed the baby to me who surprised me by snuggling in close and giggling. I love my niece and nephew but I never think of myself as all that maternal.

The sudden tugging around in the area I assumed held my heartstrings was unexpected and disconcerting. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I heard a ticking noise Celadon would be sure was a biological clock. She’d be wrong of course. It was probably indigestion. Chelsea returned with a tray heaped with cups of coffee, cream, sugar, and a plate of cookies. They looked homemade.

“Thanks. You didn’t need to go to so much trouble.” I tried handing the baby back but Chelsea shook her head.

“He likes you. Hang on to him until he starts to fuss. And don’t worry about the snacks. It’s my pleasure. I was going a little nuts on my own with the baby. Its nice to see another adult even if it is part of a police investigation.” Chelsea looked young and sweet and lonely. I was sorry to be thinking bad thoughts about her on the drive over. “So what did you need to ask me?”

“I was talking to Dean Hayes just now at the gas station in town and he said he was here with you on Sunday afternoon. Is that right?”

“Sure, Dean was here. And I was glad to see him. We both were, weren’t we sweetie?” Chelsea made little smoochy noises at the baby who giggled again in that abandoned way some babies have.

“Can you remember anything particular about the visit? Like what time he was here? When he left?”

“He got here some time around two, I guess. He played with Cyan and tried sweet-talking me with flowers and champagne. I told him it was going to take more than that to get back in my good graces. He was going to need to pay his back child support.” She made another silly face at the baby. “Isn’t that right, Cyan? Daddy has been a lousy, naughty boy and he won’t get off so easy.” I was stunned. All this time Dean had been keeping company with Piper and he had a baby with another woman. And one he wasn’t taking care of, to boot. I wouldn’t want to be Dean when Piper found out about Cyan. Cheating on her, she wouldn’t like. Cheating a baby would make her homicidal.

“So Cyan is his son?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.

“I got the blood tests to prove it and everything. He’s been ordered by the court to pay support but so far he hasn’t contributed anything but a package of diapers and that stuff he brought with him on Sunday. I told him it wasn’t nearly enough. And it certainly wasn’t going to get him back into my bed. Cheap champagne and promises is how that little one got here in the first place. Not that I’m complaining.”

“Was he here long?”

“Not too long. He played with Cyan and tried to tell me he thought he’d be coming into some money soon. He said something about being sure his sister was finally going to sell the family home and that he would get his cut. But I didn’t really believe him or care.”

“So would you say an hour? Less?”

“About an hour, I think. He seemed to be more taken with the baby than he expected to be. Kind of like you.” Chelsea smiled at me. I felt naked and uncomfortable. “Cyan has that effect on people. He just radiates fun and love.”