Maple Mayhem (A Sugar Grove Mystery) (21 page)

“Maybe she’s worried about all the long hours you work. Between your animal control duties, the garage, and now your restoration business, you’ve got to be stretched pretty thinly. Have you thought about cutting back?”

“No need to do that. Luanne understands. She realizes the business is important for our future.”

“Maybe it’s money. A lot of women think seriously about their financial future when they consider settling down.” I felt bad even mentioning it but it if Phoebe was telling the truth, Byron was in over his head.

“Money’s not a problem.”

“Is that because with Frank being dead you think you don’t need to repay what he lent you?” I asked. Byron squeezed the lily stems and I heard the cellophane crinkle.

“What loan?”

“The hundred thousand dollars Frank loaned you for your restoration business. You know, the loan you were having so much trouble paying back.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“From Phoebe. With Frank dead, she says the money you borrowed will be owed to her instead.”

“She says that, does she?”

“She does. That’s a lot of money. And it’s been a bad time to start up what most people would consider to be a luxury business.”

“I don’t have to talk to you about my business.”

“That’s true. You don’t. But Phoebe is in the hot seat for Frank’s murder and she is sure to want to put someone else in it instead. Right now you look like a good substitute.”

“Phoebe can say anything she wants. But can she prove it?”

“I don’t know. But she can certainly cast a long shadow of doubt. Are you sure there isn’t anything you want to tell Mitch before Phoebe gives him her side of the story?”

“I don’t want to talk to Mitch about anything outside of the Patriots’ chances at the Super Bowl.”

“So you weren’t up at Frank’s arguing with him on Saturday night about not repaying your loan?” Byron’s face went white then red.

“Dani, if you want me to work on your car before you reach retirement age, you had better change the subject.” Byron stood up a little straighter and loosened his grip on the bouquet. One calla lily flopped limply against the bouquet wrapper.

“You know, I’ve had just about enough of being threatened. I’ve put up with it from Frank and his dog, from whoever wants to stop the cooperative, from Bob Sterling, and now from you. I don’t think I’m going to take any more. I’ll have the Midget towed off your property and I’ll find someone else to handle the repairs.” I was so surprised at myself it was like having an out-of-body experience. I heard the words coming out of my mouth but it was hard for me to believe I was forming them. The events of the past few days were giving me a crash course in assertiveness. Even though I should have felt powerful and proud of myself for not biting my tongue and making peace, I didn’t. I just felt crummy.

I think we were both surprised by what had just happened. Byron had been my mechanic since my father died and I took over driving his favorite car. It had been hard for me to trust someone to work on my father’s car since he had always done it himself but Byron had risen to the challenge. When you think about crime you don’t necessarily think about all the little ways it will tear things up. If you had told me a week earlier I would have been looking for a new mechanic, I would have laughed in your face.

“If that’s the way you want it.” Byron stood up even straighter, turned on his heel, and marched out of the shop. A break in my friendship with Byron wasn’t what I had wanted at all. I wished more than ever that Lowell would get back and put things right but at that moment it felt like some things were broken beyond repair.

*   *   *

Bingley raced up to the Clunker as soon as he heard me pull in. I stepped out into the driveway and the smell wafting off the dog hit me from several feet away. Bingley smelled like low tide and death. He pounced on me with his filthy front paws and I gagged. Bingley and I have had a longstanding relationship that has included ear rubs and two-handed belly scratches. But not today. When it became clear to him that I wasn’t going to give him any physical affection he ran off behind the sugarhouse. Determined to see what he had gotten into, I followed.

It was no surprise, considering the smell to find one of the Shaws’ trash barrels overturned, the lid removed and trash spilling from a ripped bag. Bingley gave me a goofy dog grin then turned back to rolling around in the pile of stinking refuse. There, amid the plate scrapings and plastic wrap were a couple of lobster carapaces.

“No wonder you smell so bad,” I said to the cheerful dog. “We can’t just leave this for Kenneth and Nicole to come find.” I left him to his fun while I went into the sugarhouse in search of a new trash bag. My stomach fell again just like it had the last time I was here listening to Kenneth blaming me for the vandalism visited upon his property. I looked over at the wall where the antique sap buckets should have been and was relieved to see the red paint was gone.

I looked all around the main part of the sugarhouse and found no trace of trash bags or cleaning supplies. I walked to the back of the building and tried the office. Kenneth’s desk, his chair, and bookshelves were all neat and tidy. I tried a door in the back of the office and found it led to another, much larger room. It looked like a storage space for finished syrup and also for supplies.

This room was not on the official tour of the sugarhouse during New Hampshire Maple Weekend. It was far too functional to be interesting and was certainly not used for the production process. The Shaws prided themselves on having the prettiest, quaintest sugarhouse in Sugar Grove for the festivities each year and this room wouldn’t have helped with that image.

Very little light filtered in through only a small window. I felt along the wall for a light switch but managed to bark my shin on something big and cylindrical before locating it. My eyes searched the room for supplies but instead noticed barrel after barrel hugging the perimeter of the room and crowding all available space on the floor. The Shaws must have had a phenomenal year of sugaring or were hoping to in the future.

Each barrel would hold forty-five gallons of the sweet stuff and I estimated at least fifty barrels. I had no idea the Shaws were making so much syrup. With the amount of supplies they must need, the cooperative would really benefit from their participation. I felt even more strongly that I needed to convince them to stick with it. Maybe pitching in with their stinky dog would help get me back in their good graces even if I never located the vandal.

I squeezed through a narrow corridor left between barrels and made my way to a metal shelving unit that looked like it held cleaning supplies. As I drew closer a heavy, chemical smell filled my nostrils almost as intensely as the rotting lobster outside had done. Sure enough, a cardboard box of trash bags sat next to a package of paper towels and a bottle of glass cleaner.

I pulled out the box and was reaching into it for a bag when I noticed a milk jug with the top hacked off. A length of wire, like you might cut from a coat hanger, spanned the top of the jug. The wire was threaded through the hole in a paintbrush. My grandfather did the same thing when he wanted to clean a brush but didn’t have time to take care of it right away. The jug was filled with a reddish liquid.

I moved the jug aside and spotted a quart-size can of paint. I slid it forward and checked the label. It was the same kind they used at Village Hardware and looked brand new other than a few drips of crimson clinging to the side of the can. Where better to hide the paint used in the graffiti? No one could trace it to the vandal if it was left at the scene of the crime.

Dean was climbing even higher on my list of suspects. He never mentioned anyone buying red paint at the hardware store when it came out that the Shaws had been hit by a vandal with red paint. My mind roamed its way over to Chelsea and her baby and I didn’t really want Dean to be guilty, at least not for their sakes.

I pushed the paint can back onto the shelf where I’d found it and moved the milk jug back into place. I even abandoned the thought of tidying up the trash. Kenneth would care more about me getting to the bottom of the damage to his sugarhouse and the theft of his valuable items than he would about a bit of a mess in the yard. I hurried back out and climbed into the Clunker with every intention of confronting Dean.

I pulled in at the Hayes place hoping to find Dean. His Jeep was gone but Jill’s car was there. Jill answered the door before the second knock landed. Her coat was zipped and her purse perched on her shoulder. She clutched a ring of keys in her gloved hand.

“Hi, Jill. I was hoping to find Dean at home.” I didn’t think it likely but there was no harm in asking. After all, if anyone had expected not to find me home because my Midget wasn’t there, they would have been wrong most of the time for weeks.

“Sorry. He’s over at Piper’s. He said there was something he needed to tell her.” I wondered if Jill had any more of an idea about Dean’s baby than Piper did but it didn’t seem like my place to ask. “I’m just on my way out myself.” Jill stepped out onto the stoop and pulled the door shut behind her.

“I wouldn’t want to hold you up. While I’ve got you for just a minute though, I wanted to ask, have you had any more damage to your trees?”

“I haven’t bothered to check since Frank died. After all, he’s the one who was causing all the problems, right?” Jill pushed past me and started down the steps. “I’ve really got to go. I’m late for an appointment with the bank to talk about my mortgage. Wish me luck.”

“I hope it goes well. Do you mind if I check your trees myself?”

“Knock yourself out. I can’t imagine there will be anything to find but it never hurts to look, I guess.” Jill climbed into her car and putted off. I fished around in the back of the Clunker and found the pair of extra snow boots I always take with me from November until tax day. You never know when you’ll need to walk through the snow and it’s always easier if your feet stay warm and dry. I pulled them on, checked that my cell phone was charged up, and yanked my hat down around my ears. The temperature had been low all day and the wind was starting to pick up.

I made my way through the trees, checking carefully for signs of disturbance. I reached the trees that had previously been damaged without spotting any new problems. I looked at the bridge grafts Jill had attempted and hoped they would take. Running my mittened hand over the bark on the largest tree I sent up a little wish for healing and hoped both the tree and something bigger than us both would hear me.

Up ahead, a bit closer to Frank’s property line I saw trampled snow at the base of more trees. As I drew closer I could see more girdling. I followed what seemed like a path of damaged trees deeper and deeper into the sugar bush. As I walked my uneasiness grew. Now and then a twig cracked or a startled bird burst into the air and I jumped out of my skin. I looked around me but saw no one and told myself I was just imagining things. I was at least as worried about running into Beau as I was a murderer. Even with Frank dead that dog was a menace.

I wasn’t sure where the property line was exactly and I kept going until I thought I spotted some movement through the trees. My heart jumped into my throat. Whatever it was, it was too tall to be Beau and the figure just sort of popped up out of nowhere. I wanted to turn around and pretend I had never seen anything worth investigating. But the look on Jill’s face as she mentioned her banker flitted through my mind.

If someone was still fooling around, hampering the cooperative, I wanted to know who and why more than I wanted to turn tail and run. I still couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched as I picked my way through the trees, hoping to sneak up on whomever I has seen. I wished Graham were with me this time as I crept quietly along. I wondered briefly about guardian angels and what they might look like and whether they ever went on vacation.

Things in the woods have a certain wildness to them, a character of naturalness that humans never seem quite able to duplicate no matter how much we try. Something up in front of me had the look of falseness, or artifice that is a sure sign people have been there. I stepped closer, around a pile of hemlock branches and almost fell down into what looked like a cellar way with no house on top of it. Rough wooden doors sagged open on either side of the stairway.

I didn’t hear anything coming from underneath me so I eased myself down the stairs, one step at a time, pausing on each to listen for noises from either below or above. The earth at the sides of the stairs was held back by lengths of logs sunk deep into the soil. At the bottom, another door, this one made of heavy steel, stood slightly open. I pushed it open slowly and peeked around.

The lighting level was low and seemed to be coming from a single source in a corner. I wished I had a flashlight. I swung the door open widely to let in more light and stepped all the way into the underground room. The first thing I noticed was the tidiness of it. Shelving lined the walls and supplies of all sorts filled every inch of space. Food, bottled water, beer, books, batteries, and toilet paper crowded together in row upon row. The space was enormous. Forced to guess I’d have said it rivaled Grampa’s cow barn for square footage.

It looked like something you’d see on the news after the FBI raided a cult compound. The only things that looked out of place were a couple of boxes stacked on the floor. I lifted the flap on the top one to reveal crumpled newspaper carefully wedged as cushioning around tree taps, sap buckets, and even an old hand auger for making holes in a maple tree. It looked like exactly the sort of things missing from Kenneth’s sugaring display. It was packed like someone was moving their best china cross-country in a covered wagon.

The second thing I noticed was that I recognized the place. I turned my head around slowly and stepped farther into the room to explore, trying to remember where I had seen it before. An old metal flashlight lay on its side on a table next to a pile of fabric and just within its beam of light I saw Phoebe sagging in a chair. Her legs were tied together at the ankles and her arms were lashed to the arms of the chair with what looked like torn strips of fabric. She appeared to be asleep.

I laid my hand on her shoulder and gave her a little shake but she didn’t rouse. I picked up the flashlight and pointed it at her to get a better look at her face. Most of her hair was stuffed up in a baseball cap but the little bit escaping on the right side was matted and sticky. I touched it and checked my fingers. Blood. I shook her again but still got no response.

I touched her wrist, checking for a pulse and felt one thrumming away. Not that I was any kind of an expert but it seemed fairly strong. I bent over to begin wrestling with the knot binding her ankles when it occurred to me there was no way I was going to be able to drag Phoebe out of the bunker, let alone carry her to safety by myself. I had to get her to wake up. There was only one thing for it. I started singing.

I may be small but my voice is not. My pipes can rattle the chandelier in the opera house if I take the notion to do so. Now I’m not saying this is a case of good things coming in a small package. Just about anyone who has heard me lift up a joyful noise has asked me to stop doing so immediately.

Celadon told me once my singing sounds like a cross between cats brawling and a high-speed train collision. For the first time ever, I was hoping she was right. No one who wasn’t dead ought to be able to remain in the land of Nod with me serenading them. I dug deep and let out a noise loud enough to deafen myself. Which explains why I didn’t notice someone creeping up behind me until I felt something hard pressed against the back of my head.

I felt my voice choke off in mid note. I tried to turn around but a strong hand gripped the back of my neck and pinned me in place.

“Well, this is unfortunate.” Kenneth Shaw’s voice filled the room and I noticed Phoebe’s eyes fluttering. “What brings you by?” He squeezed even harder on my neck.

“I was checking for more damaged trees up at Jill’s place and I thought I saw something moving around over here. With everything that’s been going on I thought I’d better check it out. What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m tying up loose ends.” He shoved me toward a second chair and pushed me into it. Grabbing the flashlight from my trembling hand, Kenneth placed it on the table facing the fabric. Keeping the gun in his other hand trained on me, he began tearing strips from the fabric, which looked like a bedsheet, with the help of his teeth. Once he had three strips he stopped. “Now unless you want me to shoot you, I suggest you tie your ankles together, just like your friend here did.” Kenneth tossed one of the fabric strips into my lap and waggled the gun at me.

“I’m a loose end?” I had no idea what he was talking about. I racked my brain for how he could possibly be involved with what was going on. Then I remembered the boxes. The items from the Shaws’ place had been too carefully packed to be the handiwork of someone who didn’t care about them. “You’re the vandal, aren’t you?” Kenneth shook his head sadly at me and gestured at the fabric in my lap with the gun.

“Please, just get on with it.”

“But why? Why would you do something like that to your neighbors? To your friends? It wasn’t the competition, was it?” I bent down and started fastening my ankles together, hoping he would start talking if I started cooperating.

“Of course it wasn’t the competition. I sell more syrup in a month than most of the rest of the producers in town sell in a year. Now, I’m going to put the gun down to tie up your hands. I’ll still be able to get to it faster than you if I need to. If you give me any trouble, I’ll shoot Phoebe. Do you understand?” I nodded and held still while he tied each of my wrists to the arms of the chair. Finally, after all these years it was like Phoebe and I were wearing matching outfits. If only she were awake, she might be pleased.

“What was it then?”

“The cooperative. You just had to try to solve some- one else’s problems. I swear it’s a genetic thing with all of you Greenes. It’s like you are chromosomally unable to mind your own business if you see any problems in the community.”

“But you are a community leader yourself. Why wouldn’t you want the cooperative to go forward?”

“The inspection.”

“But you run a first-rate place. You would have easily passed the inspection and it isn’t as if the five-dollar fee would have been a hardship for you.”

“Oh it would have passed for quality but then I would have needed to explain all the syrup we were storing.” I thought back to all the barrels in the back room at Kenneth’s place.

“You do have a lot more in storage than I would have thought.” Kenneth gave both wrists a tug to verify the bonds were secure.

“Now how would you know that?”

“I stopped by today to verify Dean’s alibi. I thought he might have been the one who took your valuables. While I was there I noticed Bingley had gotten into the trash and made a mess of the yard. I let myself into the sugarhouse to look for a new trash bag to clean it all up.”

“What did I tell you about compulsive do-gooderness?”

“I spotted the paintbrush you must have used to deface your own wall and a whole lot of barrels. That still doesn’t explain why you’re doing this.”

“The syrup didn’t come from my own trees. And the inspectors would have been suspicious of all the excess and where it came from. I couldn’t let them into the facility. I couldn’t explain to you why I didn’t want to participate so I decided to sabotage all the sugarhouses to make it look like joining the cooperative was a bad idea. Then when I chose not to be a part of it no one would think twice.”

“Where did all the excess come from?”

“You must have heard of the warehouse heist up in Canada.” I felt my jaw drop, just like in a cartoon.

“You mean the robbery at the syrup reserve a couple of years ago? The syrup in the barrels came from that?” The vast majority of the world’s maple syrup supply comes from Quebec. Even though syrup’s per-barrel price is approximately thirteen times that of crude oil, security and inventory control at the warehouse had been low-key. Unfortunately, someone had taken advantage of that fact and had used trucks to make off with around eighteen million dollars worth of syrup, wholesale. It was one of the biggest agricultural heists in world history.

“Exactly.”

“But why would you do a thing like that? I thought you loved making syrup?”

“
You
love making syrup. I’m sick to death of the work and the unpredictability of the whole business.”

“But what about the tradition? Your family has been doing it at least as long as mine.”

“But unlike your family, mine has no interest in continuing the tradition. Both of the kids have moved away and have lives of their own. It’s not like I’m going to ask an oral surgeon and an aviation engineer to drop their careers to park in the woods and draw fluids off of trees for a few weeks each year.”

“You could have just stopped sugaring if you were sick of it. You didn’t need to do any of this.”

“You’re wrong about that, too. We’ve been barely keeping up appearances for years. Most of our wealth was tied up in stocks and real estate. You must have heard how well all of that’s been doing lately. And the kids’ college costs just about did us in. When someone in the business offered to sell me a whole lot of the stolen syrup at a deep, deep discount. I took all the cash I could get my hands on and bought it. We’re finally getting back on our feet because of the tremendous profit.” My head was reeling, trying to reconcile what I thought I knew with what I was being told. The Shaws couldn’t be thieves or saboteurs, could they?