Maple Syrup Mysteries Box Set 2: Books 4-6

by Emily James

  Ahanti pointed toward the door, and the girl left without an argument.

  I stepped out of her path for a second time. “That sounds like a conversation you’ve had before.”

  “Too many times.” Ahanti swore. “She was here that day, hanging around. I should have asked her if she saw anyone going into the back room before I shut her down.”

  “You didn’t ask Eddie, either,” Terrance piped up from behind the catalogue of gadgets he was flipping through. The front showed a red drone that looked a bit like a race car with propellers.

  “Eddie wasn’t here that day,” Ahanti said. “Which is just my luck, since he has an excellent memory for details. He could have told us right away if Cary was here and what he did.”

  I would have shot Terrance a you’re-not-helping glare, but he never lowered the catalogue. I squeezed Ahanti’s arm. “Don’t worry. Make the list, and we’ll work on it methodically when I get back.” I backed toward the door. “Right now, I have to go save Mark from my dad.”

  Thankfully, Ahanti seemed to believe my excuse. It probably helped that Mark had sounded like he needed an out. Ahanti was one of the few people who could catch me in a lie if I were truly trying to get away with it, but she knew what my dad could be like.

  I called Geoff’s office again and arranged to meet him for lunch. I didn’t tell him why. He’d assume it was about Ahanti, and that was true enough.

  Even though I’d be meeting him in a public place, I did not want to follow the pattern of so many heroines who did things that made them too stupid to live in the mystery novels I liked to read. If Geoff turned out to be the stalker, he could very well wait for me in the parking lot or slash the tires of my rental car so that I ended up on the side of the road somewhere.

  No thank you. I was going to hope for the best and plan for the worst this time.

  Since Geoff had never met Mark, we decided to gamble that he wouldn’t know what Mark looked like. Men didn’t ogle pictures of their friends the way women did. We’d failed trying to pull the trick of Mark as an innocent bystander on Ahanti, but we might get away with it on Geoff. Mark had wanted to come along upfront, but I had to have complete control over the situation to read Geoff. I couldn’t mess this one up. Ahanti’s future happiness—and safety—depended on it.

  I picked a table with another empty one next to it and waited for Geoff. Mark took a seat at the nearby table, placing himself so that when Geoff sat, Mark would be behind him. It’d make eavesdropping easier for Mark and make Geoff less likely to notice and recognize him on the off chance he had seen a picture.

  Geoff showed up almost on time. Whenever I’d had a late-morning appointment with him, he’d always been running behind. My brain logged the unusualness of it the same as it had inconsistencies in witness statements back when I’d been actively working as a lawyer.

  Rearranging his schedule to arrive on time meant he wanted to be sure I didn’t read in to his lateness. Poor guy didn’t realize I’d also read into his promptness.

  We ordered and settled in at the table.

  He didn’t touch his food. “How’s Ahanti? She hasn’t called me again since letting me know she has a stalker.”

  “She’s managing.”

  I took a bite of my bacon, brie, and apricot grilled cheese. Someone really needed to open a gourmet grilled cheese place in Fair Haven. I’d go there every day.

  Geoff followed my lead, though it was clear by the how-can-you-eat-at-a-time-like-this look he gave me that he was waiting for my answer and didn’t want to wait long.

  Based on what I knew of Geoff, he’d always seemed like a bad liar. He’d barely been able to string two coherent sentences together the week before he proposed to Ahanti. Same when he’d wanted to surprise her with the trip to the Dominican. All of that could be an act if he were her stalker. Or it could mean that the stalking somehow fit into the delusion he’d built and so it didn’t rattle him the way trying to hide a happy surprise from Ahanti did.

  I wouldn’t know until I pressed it. “We do have a lead on Ahanti’s situation. That’s why I asked you here.”

  He set his sandwich down and leaned forward.

  I took my phone from my purse, queued up the photo of him, and handed it across the table. One of the best ways to assess someone’s guilt or innocence, according to my parents, was to catch them off guard. Geoff wouldn’t be expecting to see himself on my phone.

  His hand twitched against his plate, pushing it away slightly. “How did you get this?”

  No denying it was him. No trying to pretend it must have been taken at a different time. That was enough of an admission of some sort of guilt that I had no intention of telling him about the private investigator I’d hired. Or any other piece of information about Ahanti’s safety.

  “What were you doing staking out her apartment?”

  He put my phone on the table, face down. He didn’t want to look at it anymore, but he also wasn’t reacting aggressively by shoving it back across the table to me. That spoke to shame.

  Not the emotion I’d expect from her stalker. Stalkers didn’t tend to exhibit shame, even when they were caught. They saw nothing wrong with their actions to be ashamed of.

  “It’s not what it looks like. I’m not her stalker. Or a new stalker.” He took a swig of coffee that I knew must have burned all the way down—mine was still too hot to even tentatively sip.

  “Has Ahanti seen these?” His words came out in a gasp, betraying him on how hot that coffee had been.

  I wasn’t as certain as I needed to be yet that he was innocent, but it was important that he think I believed in him. “Ahanti doesn’t know about it yet. I figured there had to be some explanation, so I came to you first.”

  His shoulders came down, and he brought his sandwich back toward him.

  As strange as it might seem to someone else, he won me over with that small change. He’d been worried about Ahanti’s reaction. And I didn’t think it was worry because he’d been exposed for what he was. He wasn’t worried he might lose her. It seemed a lot more like worry that he’d add more stress to her when she already had enough.

  “So explain it to me. Please. What were you doing there?”

  “Once you told me the police couldn’t get a restraining order on the guy because Ahanti didn’t know who he was, I got worried. I thought if I could see someone we knew hanging around her place, it’d solve the problem.” He bit into his sandwich, swallowed, and grimaced. He ran a hand over his no-doubt scalded throat. “I’m no good at it. I fell asleep.”

  His answer made sense. How many times had I gotten myself into trouble because I’d wanted to help someone that the police couldn’t aid? It was a good thing Mark couldn’t read my thoughts, because I knew his answer would be too many.

  Geoff and I talked for a few more minutes, mostly me assuring him that Ahanti was okay and that I was putting what resources I had behind finding her stalker. Then he headed back to work.

  Once he was out of sight, Mark slipped from his table over to mine.

  “Do you believe him?” he asked.

  I daubed the crumbs off my plate, stalling for time. His story didn’t have any holes in it that I could spot. He’d also seemed genuinely embarrassed by being caught and more concerned about Ahanti’s well-being than anything else. “I can’t think of any reason why he’d be stalking his fiancée or why he’d send a picture of himself with the face burned out to scare her. If he wanted to break up with her, he could have done it easier ways.”

  Mark leaned back in his chair. “He didn’t seem like he’d want to anyway.”

  He hadn’t. So why did I still feel all tangled up inside?

  The logical side of me said it was because I’d learned to trust no one rather than because Geoff was guilty of anything worse than poor judgment. People had lied to me before, and I’d fallen for it. I’d thought people were innocent when they weren’t.

  If pigs flew and he turned out to be her stalker, he also woul
dn’t be the first friend who I’d helped convict of a crime.

  I wasn’t going to gamble Ahanti’s safety on my desire to be a loyal friend to Geoff.

  “I’ll have Rockwood Investigations look into him, maybe even tail him for a bit, just to be sure.”

  8

  “Is there something wrong with my neck?” Mark asked as we headed back to the car. “My skin feels tight and like my shirt collar is rubbing against something.”

  I hadn’t noticed anything other than a distinct sunburn starting on his face. I leaned backward. His neck was cayenne pepper-red. “You’re definitely burnt.”

  Mark gingerly touched his fingers to the back of his neck and flinched. “That explains the headache, too. I didn’t expect to get that much sun first thing in the morning.” He made a face like I’d asked him to drink a whole bottle of Buckley’s cough syrup. “I didn’t expect to be out there for hours, either. I could have played two or three games of basketball in the same amount of time.”

  I tried not to laugh, but it was impossible. “We need to get you some aloe vera gel and ibuprofen.”

  He managed a groan, but his feet dragged. He handed me the keys. “I don’t have the energy to face the traffic.”

  The last time I’d driven Mark rather than the other way around, he’d had a broken wrist. It killed my desire to laugh, and all my mother-hen instincts flooded to the surface. It’s just a sunburn, I repeated over to myself.

  Before meeting Mark, I hadn’t realized how nerve-wracking loving someone could be. I’d have taken his sunburn onto my skin if I could have. “Were those the only reasons you faked an emergency? My dad’s going to know what we were up to, by the way.”

  Mark shook his head, cringed, moved a hand partway to his neck, and scowled. “He says he and your mom are taking the weekend off so we can take their yacht out on Chesapeake Bay.”

  My hands jerked slightly, and the car veered a wheel into the other lane. A horn blared behind me, and I straightened out. Maybe I should watch the sky for pigs. If my parents were taking the weekend off, anything could happen. “They’re taking the whole weekend off? You’re sure?”

  Mark nodded at the pace of a turtle. “You didn’t mention your parents had a yacht.”

  He hadn’t answered my question about the golfing, and the way he’d phrased his statement about the yacht was almost too careful. Something had definitely happened on that golf course. “My parents have a yacht. We never went out on it much because they could rarely manage the time away.”

  “I see,” Mark said.

  I didn’t, but now didn’t seem to be the time to press it.

  A text came in from Ahanti a few seconds after I parked the car in the pharmacy parking lot. Taking off early today. Too stressed to focus. Can you guys come over?

  We picked up the aloe vera, along with a tube of the strongest sunscreen we could find, and I dropped Mark off at the hotel. He’d begged off coming back with me to Ahanti’s apartment, saying he needed to go sleep off his sunburn.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d feel worse tomorrow. I did promise to pick us up something for a late supper on my way back. When we got home, I really needed to improve my cooking skills in preparation for having a family. I didn’t want my kids eating takeout every night.

  Ahanti buzzed me in. She’d pushed her couch back against one wall and had pulled out the boxes where she kept her mementos.

  “I’m sorting through all of it and picking out the ones I think are from the stalker.”

  I stepped over the circle of boxes and sat beside her, cross-legged. It was a great idea. Looking through the missives sent by the stalker would also help me prove to myself that it couldn’t possibly have been Geoff. “Hopefully we can find some evidence that points to Cary.”

  Since so many people had already handled the mementos over the years, there wasn’t any point in wearing gloves to preserve fingerprints. We started with the earliest boxes. Ahanti might be a pack rat, but she was an organized one. All her boxes of mementoes were labeled with the year, and inside were smaller boxes and folders labeled with months.

  Ahanti’s cheeks flushed. “Geoff teases me that it’s ego keeping all this. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to be an artist, though. When someone hates their tattoo, or a design, or you hear someone running down tattoos in general…”

  I wasn’t an artist, but, on some level, I got what she meant. I’d be nice if lawyers had the same option. In a way, maybe I did in the friendships I’d made in Fair Haven by helping people. The first few months I’d been there, I’d been the town pariah, outcast because I wasn’t born there and because of all the rumors circulating about me thanks to a few malicious souls. It’d taken a while, but I’d carved out a place for myself. I was now accepted as one of their own.

  My engagement to a Cavanaugh hadn’t hurt, either.

  I got out my phone to take notes. I normally preferred working with paper and pen, but since I was living out of a hotel room, making them on my phone would keep outside eyes from seeing them, and it’d enable me to check them over whenever I needed to.

  Ahanti had a pile of large freezer bags and a permanent marker next to her. I could only imagine that she planned to package each piece of potential evidence with a date. It was that kind of organization that had made her simultaneously a successful artist and a successful business owner. Not everyone could be both.

  Ahanti handed me the photo that started it all. I flipped it over. The message on the back was written in bold red marker.

  “So how do we start?” Ahanti asked.

  “Since this is the only thing we’re certain he sent, we can use it to match the handwriting on other letters.”

  Ahanti shifted her gaze to the side and traced the label on the box closest to her. “It’s not the only one I’m sure came from him.”

  It took all my courtroom training not to react. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Almost everyone withheld things, embarrassed by them or thinking they weren’t important. I’d just figured Ahanti would know better after all her years of friendship with me. “Show me the others.”

  She scrounged through the box marked APRIL and handed me two cards. The contents weren’t X-rated, but they were definitely more intimate than what a normal customer would have written, mentioning the softness of her touch and the smell of her hair when she leaned over him.

  The notes were handwritten, with no more grammatical errors than I would have expected from anyone. That left us without a clue to the sender’s intelligence or education level.

  I snapped pictures of both the notes and the photo of Geoff, front and back. The cards were in black pen instead of the red marker on the photo, so the letters were fatter on the picture and the writing blockier and less clear. The handwriting looked like it might be the same, though it was a little hard to tell.

  Ahanti was watching me as if she expected a lecture. She kind of deserved one for not telling anyone how far the letter writer had gone before now. Lecturing her wouldn’t change anything, though. “Well, at least we have a bigger sample size.”

  I tugged the May box toward me while Ahanti took the June one. She didn’t remember him sending anything in either of those months other than the picture of Geoff, but we had to be thorough. It seemed strange that the stalker would skip such a long stretch of time.

  I crossed my mental fingers. Combing through evidence could be a slow process. We wouldn’t have any answers in the hour-length of a TV show. Real evidence collection was like going on a scavenger hunt or following a trail of footprints and broken branches through the woods.

  Ahanti was right about May. I didn’t find anything that matched or had a similar tone. Most of the cards and notes were simple thank-yous. A few looked like they’d been originally attached to a gift like a bottle of wine.

  “You get a lot of appreciative clients.”

  Ahanti shrugged. “I only do custom work, so we spend a lot of time together. I’ve also got a reputation
for being able to fix old tattoos or botched jobs and turn them into something beautiful that looks like they intended it that way all along. I’ve even had a few chemo patients whose eyebrows never grew back in coming for cosmetic help. Those ones I do at cost.” She lovingly stroked the card in her hand. “This one was from a woman who had a nasty scar on her arm from a car accident. She’d given up wearing t-shirts or a bathing suit because she couldn’t stand the stares. We hid it under a gorgeous rose as part of the stem. That was a good day.”

  Ahanti and Terrance were the only tattoo artists I knew, but it seemed like, while they were giving people tattoos, they were often also giving them so much more.

  I moved back to the February box. Nothing there, either. Ahanti also came up empty with January.

  I tapped a card against the box edge. The gaps really bothered me. Why only send her things in some months and not others? If Cary were her stalker, shouldn’t he have shown some consistency?

  I popped the lid on November’s box. Ahanti was already halfway into December’s.

  She sucked in a breath and passed the card in her hand over to me. The handwriting seemed to match. This one talked about what a gift she was to him. I took a picture.

  She gave a visible shiver. “The worst part is he keeps repeating the gift idea.” She flipped the card over so I could see the front had a sparkly gift box on it. “I think he knows my name means gift.”

  I’d missed that connection completely. The police likely would have, too, if they’d been presented with it. It was a very personal thing. “Do you remember if anyone asked you the meaning of your name?”

  She held the card pinched between two fingers like it was filthy and dropped it into a freezer bag. “Only Terrance. Back at Cary’s, when we’d been working together a few months.” She shot me a look like she could guess what I’d say in response. “But this isn’t Terrance. Cary was there too. He would have heard it.”