Maple Syrup Mysteries Box Set 2: Books 4-6

by Emily James

  I paddled backward to the rock Alice had perched on less than five minutes ago. It was big enough for us to sit on if I could get us up, but not big enough for me to safely leave her while I tried to climb back up the slope. She could too easily slide off the rock and drown. I didn’t want to think about how hard she must have hit her head to still be unconscious, given the fifty-degree water.

  One step at a time. First I’d get us up on that rock, then I’d figure out how to get help when my purse, cell phone, and car keys were now at the bottom of the lake.

  The rock wasn’t perfectly flat. It had a lip that tucked down into the water almost like a ledge. That might give me enough leverage if I could get a hold of the rock and get a knee on the ledge.

  I swam us up as far as I could above it and tried to grab onto the back edge with my swimming hand while torqueing my knee. The slick surface seemed to move out from under me. My elbow scraped along the rock, taking off my skin and leaving throbbing in its wake.

  For a second, Alice and I both went under. I fought my way back to the surface.

  I sucked in a sharp breath and clasped tighter to Alice. Shaking started in my core and worked its way out.

  Focus. I had to focus. Focus on Mark’s dimpled smile and the way he looked at me, like I was something special. Focus on Toby’s snores and Velma’s doggie eyebrows that could speak more than words. Focus on playing with Elise’s kids and Grant and Megan’s kids, on the summer bonfires Russ promised me and the baby shower I was going to plan for Stacey, on my mom taking enough time off work to visit me in Michigan, on fresh maple syrup, and singing hymns in church, and the smell of the bush after it rained.

  On all the reasons this rock couldn’t beat me.

  I wriggled up the rock more slowly this time. I probably looked like a worm tossed into a bowl of half-set Jell-o. But I made it to the top, and I didn’t lose my grip on Alice.

  I wrapped both arms around her and leaned my head back against the slope.

  I wasn’t brave enough for this. To keep facing down people who wanted to kill me.

  Maybe my mom was right—I should go back to being a criminal lawyer. The bad guys didn’t tend to kill people who were benefiting them. Perhaps that was the real reason my parents chose to be defense attorneys.

  None of that would matter if I died out here, though. What time was it? How long until I could expect someone to worry about me and come looking? Maybe we could wait it out.

  Miraculously, the water hadn’t destroyed my watch. Unfortunately, what felt like hours to me had only been fifteen minutes.

  The warm oozing on the side of my head hadn’t stopped, and Alice gained ten pounds with every minute that passed, and for all I knew, she had a brain hemorrhage and would die while I was holding her. We couldn’t wait it out.

  No other rest stops were near enough to hear me if I yelled, and I would have heard another car pull in. If I’d been on my own, I could probably have carefully climbed the sheer slope and walked back to town, though I still felt dizzier than I should have, given how long ago I’d hit my head, and my shoulder felt wet in a way that I knew wasn’t water. At the least, I could have walked to the road and flagged down help. None of that was even possible since I couldn’t leave Alice.

  Too bad my car wasn’t an Autobot like in Transformers. I could send it for help. Strike that—if my car was an Autobot, it could just pick us up off this rock and carry us to the hospital.

  I really had hit my head hard. I was thinking gibberish now.

  I straightened. Wait. My car wasn’t an autobot, but it was equipped with a security system. If someone tried to break in, the security company received an alert, complete with GPS coordinates. Help might not come instantly, but it was the best shot we had.

  All I had to do was manage to set off the alarm from down here.

  My car should be parked right along the railing just a little to the right of us. I grabbed a loose rock from the drop-off behind me and heaved it. It hit the wall and bounced back, barely missing us.

  Crap. I needed more height or I’d knock myself out. Activities that involved throwing things also hadn’t been my strength growing up. The closet I’d ever come to playing a sport was jump rope in fifth grade.

  I picked another rock, braced my feet on the rock’s underwater ledge, and leaned forward as much as I could without unbalancing us so we fell into the water.

  I chucked the rock up and backwards. A soft thump. It must have hit the grass. I was getting closer.

  But I was also running out of rocks big enough to set off my car alarm if I connected.

  The last good-sized rock was almost too large for me to throw one-handed. If I made it out of this alive, it was going to be the kind of story someday that my grandkids would think I’d made up.

  I launched the rock and prayed.

  A crash, and my horn honked in the unmistakable pattern of a car alarm.

  Tears built in my eyes, and I blinked them away. Help was coming.

  17

  I watched the seconds, then minutes, pass on my watch. I’d expected a bit of a wait given how short-staffed the Fair Haven police department was at present, but I hadn’t thought it would take this long. If my security company didn’t call this in, they could consider my subscription canceled. Not that I’d need it if I were dead, but it was the principle of the thing.

  My head felt strangely disconnected from my body, like my arms and legs didn’t belong to me anymore. I kept repeating the command to my hands to hold on to Alice. Help had to be coming. It had to be.

  A car door slammed above us. My car’s horn must have hidden the sound of the other vehicle pulling in.

  “Nicole?” Elise’s shouted. Her voice sounded the same way it had when her son fell off his bike and didn’t get up right away. “Nicole!”

  “Down here.” It came out weak and garbled. Would she leave, thinking I wasn’t here, if she couldn’t hear me over the car alarm? Sweat broke out on my upper lip. I tried again. “Over the ledge. Down here.”

  Her face appeared at the top of the drop-off. Her skin was so pale compared to her dark hair that she reminded me of a vampire. “Hang on. I’m calling an ambulance and a fire truck.”

  My throat clogged. “Just stay where I can see you, okay?” I knew it was stupid and childish, but if she didn’t stay in sight, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t start to think I’d hallucinated her and give up. It felt like I’d been down here for days.

  Elise laid down and reached her hand over the edge. I raised an arm up, but it was much too far. Our fingers couldn’t connect. I wrapped my arm back around Alice.

  Elise drew her arm back up. “I won’t go anywhere. You know Mark would kill me if I did.”

  My laugh came out a bit crazy.

  Then she was talking to someone on the other end of the phone. I heard my name, but I couldn’t be sure if she was saying it to the person on the phone or to me.

  “They’re on their way,” she said to me. Her raised voice made me certain this time. “It won’t be long. I promise.”

  It felt so good to hear her voice—to hear any voice other than my own. “How did you know it was me?”

  “I recognized your car. I thought you were nuts for how much you loved that sparkly dragonfly Mark gave you to hang on your rearview mirror, but now I’m going to hug him for it. What happened?”

  I had a suspicion that she was simply trying to keep me talking to make sure I didn’t go into delayed shock. I didn’t care. I filled her in on how Alice and I ended up perched on a rock at the water’s edge, including throwing the stones at my car.

  By the time I finished, sirens drew close. The firemen hauled Alice up on a backboard and then brought me up after her.

  As soon as my feet hit solid ground, strong, familiar arms wrapped around me. I collapsed against Mark and finally let myself cry. I owed whoever had called him a big thanks.

  “If you wanted out of our engagement,” Mark whispered against my hair as my tears eased, �
��I’m sure we could have found an easier way than drowning yourself. It’s not till death do us part yet.”

  I pulled back and gave him a playful smack on the shoulder. He leaned in and stole a long kiss.

  A throat cleared beside us. “I have to take her to the hospital,” one of the EMTs said, “but you can ride along if you’d like.”

  I didn’t dare look at my car as we passed to see what kind of damage I’d done. It wasn’t like I could drive it anyway. My spare set of keys was back at my house, and I was pretty sure I’d be prohibited from driving for at least a couple of days thanks to my head wound.

  Tony at Quantum Mechanics was going to have a field day with the fact that I’d smashed up my car again.

  Mark held my hand through the entire short trip to the hospital. I’d expected my mom to meet us, but she wasn’t there, not even after the EMTs wheeled me in to Emergency. Before I could ask Mark if someone had called her, his phone rang.

  He glanced at the screen, and the muscles around his lips tensed. “It’s Chief McTavish. I have to take it.”

  The doctor showed up at the same time, so I didn’t even get a chance to ask him when Chief McTavish returned to work. It had to be sometime while I was hanging out on the rock with Alice.

  The gash on my head needed stitches, but my CT scan and x-rays came back clean. A nurse brought me a cookie and a glass of orange juice since I’d essentially donated blood to my t-shirt.

  Mark stopped the doctor as he was leaving me, and they talked outside of my earshot. When I saw them together, it finally clicked why Dr. Santos’ name had sounded familiar. He was the doctor Mark had been hoping was on duty the day Sugarwood’s handyman Noah was attacked a few months ago. I was just grateful I hadn’t ended up with Dr. Johnson, the doctor Noah got. The man would have probably suggested Alice accidentally hit the gas and drove us into the lake.

  Mark shook Dr. Santos’ hand and returned to my side. “He said everything looks good. I need to watch you for a couple of days for any signs of concussion.” He kissed my forehead, right next to the stitches. “Something I’m more than happy to do.”

  His voice sounded casual, but the way he held his shoulders was off, almost like he was balancing a heavy load on them. And he didn’t lecture me about putting myself in harm’s way or going out to talk to Alice alone.

  A quiver built in my stomach. Something was definitely wrong.

  “Do I have a fatal brain bleed and everyone is afraid to tell me I only have hours to live?” I blurted.

  Mark’s mouth drooped open. “What? No. Other than likely having a minor concussion, you’re fine.” His dimples peeked out. “Do you need me to pinky swear?”

  I made a pouty face. “Maybe.”

  It probably was my imagination playing tricks on me thanks to the possible concussion. Concussions could play with emotions and the ability to think clearly.

  But that tension in Mark’s shoulders was still there, and as soon as the smile left his lips, I could see it even in the way he held his jaw. And my mom still wasn’t here. There was no way with how long it’d taken to run tests and get results that Mark hadn’t called her. Surely she would have been concerned enough to come.

  Mark held out his hand to me. “Let’s get you home where you can rest. Elise said she’d call when there’s any news on Alice Benjamin’s condition, so we don’t need to hang around here.”

  I shrunk back. It actually felt like he was trying to distract me. “Where’s my mom? Is she waiting at home?”

  Mark’s shoulders slumped like a crumbling wall. “I told her you’d notice and wouldn’t be easily dissuaded, even with a head wound. She wanted me to try anyway.” He took my hand this time. “Let’s at least get to the car where we can talk privately.”

  He inclined his head toward the thin sheet that separated my bed from all the others in the emergency room.

  The concussed part of my brain wanted me to throw a temper tantrum and demand to know immediately what they were trying to hide from me, but a calmer part of me let Mark help me down off the bed and out to his truck. He stayed by me so I could use him as a stabilizer to climb in.

  Some of the annoyance drained out of me. It was hard to stay frustrated with a man who loved you enough to think about the small things that might make you feel safe and comfortable.

  Mark climbed in, but he didn’t start the car, almost as if he expected me to want to go somewhere other than home once I heard what he had to say.

  “Your mom is with Chief McTavish,” Mark said.

  For a second, a crazy image of them running off together flashed across my mind, but I knew that was definitely the concussion talking.

  Still, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what Mark had to say much better.

  He reached out and threaded his fingers with mine again. “When your mom couldn’t reach you on your cell phone this morning, she decided to go to The Sunburnt Arms. You’d left her a note saying you’d be there.”

  That felt like years ago, but according to my watch, it was only two hours ago. I glanced at the dash of Mark’s truck. The clock there said it’d been closer to four hours. I held my watch up to my ear. It wasn’t ticking. Even though the water hadn’t gotten to it immediately, it must have worked its way in and killed it at last.

  I forced my gaze back to Mark’s face. Hopefully this concussion resolved quickly. My concentration was shot. Anything shiny sent me chasing off in a random direction.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “She went around back, planning to go in the kitchen door rather than trying to convince whoever might be on the desk to let her go back. Mandy’s car was parked out of sight behind the building. Its front end was a wreck.”

  He couldn’t mean what it sounded like. I shook my head. Or tried to. The ibuprofen the hospital gave me had taken the edge off my migraine-level headache, but the movement brought it rushing back.

  Mark stroked his thumb over my knuckles. “Your mom thought the car had been vandalized, and insisted Mandy call the police to report it. Mandy resisted, claiming that it would make her guests feel even less safe if someone was damaging cars in her parking lot. Your mom called it in anyway.”

  That sounded like my mom. Even though my parents usually defended people, they had a high regard for the legal system and proper reporting of crimes. My mom would never have allowed what she thought was a vandalism to go unreported.

  But surely there had to be another explanation for it than the one that was screaming in my mind right alongside the blood pulsing in my temples. “Go on,” I whispered.

  “Chief McTavish had just gotten to the office, and since everyone else available was dealing with what had happened to you and Alice, he responded to the call. He immediately made the connection. They’re rushing results from the lab to see if the paint transfer on Mandy’s car matches the make and model of Alice Benjamin’s car, but…” Mark’s gaze dropped to our intertwined hands. “They also found blood in the trunk.”

  18

  My body went so numb I almost couldn’t feel my headache anymore. I knew it was there, but it was like music playing in the apartment next door.

  Mandy couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have. Even if I believed she killed Bruce Vilsack—and I didn’t—she never, ever would have hurt me. She was my friend.

  But my jumbled mind couldn’t seem to bring that all together. All I could get out was a simple “No.”

  Mark finally put the key in the ignition. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  I gave him his hand back so he could drive and buckled myself in. Emotionally I couldn’t process it, but the logical part of me, the part that would always be a lawyer even if I wasn’t practicing law, said it made sense. Alice had been the target all along, and Mandy accidentally killed Bruce when he entered the room. She’d been expecting Alice.

  Mandy loved The Sunburnt Arms. If Alice’s test results showed that the beaches needed to be closed because of toxic algae, Mandy might have been forced to sell af
ter all. She’d once told me that her business didn’t operate on a big margin. The tourist season saw them through the lean times. A lean tourist season would force her to close.

  “But Mandy would have known that NOAA would send someone else if she killed Alice.”

  “The working theory is that Mandy was hoping to delay the investigation of the lake water until after tourist season.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud until Mark answered. Obviously, Chief McTavish or my mom had talked to him about the same line of reasoning that I’d been following.

  I held out one of my arms. No rash. “If the algae blooms are toxic, shouldn’t I be showing symptoms?”

  “Not necessarily. It’s early in the year, so levels are still low.”

  The soft whoosh of tires on asphalt changed to grinding as we turned onto the road to Sugarwood.

  “Besides,” Mark said, “Mandy wouldn’t have wanted to risk the test results. Whether or not the algae is harmful, she still had a strong motive.”

  I closed my eyes. The bright sun pounding through the windows wasn’t helping the ache inside my skull. Or the one inside my heart. “I guess I thought our friendship was stronger. If Mandy did this, she knew I’d be in that car.”

  As soon as we stepped in the house, the dogs examined me from top to bottom with their noses. For the first time, I realized that I looked more bedraggled than I felt, and that was saying something.

  The ache in my heart over what Mandy might have done eased a little. This was the first time in my life that I hadn’t felt self-conscious about my appearance around a man I cared about. Over the years we’d be together, Mark would see me at my best and my worst, and feeling loved by him no matter what was one of the best signs I could think of that the decision to marry him was the right one.