by Emily James
He gave my hand a good squeeze, much as Fay had done, and I made a mental note to never wear my emerald ring to a funeral again.
“Stan was my best friend,” he said. “Giving you a ride home is the least I can do.”
My body was starting to feel like I’d lashed bricks to my wrists and ankles. “Would it be terribly rude to ask for that ride right away?”
“Not at all. It’ll be hours yet before everyone else clears out of here, and no one expects you to stay the whole time. I’ll pull my truck up front so you don’t have to go all the way through the parking lot in the rain.”
Another truck. At least I was getting a bit better at maneuvering my way in while wearing a skirt and heels.
I swallowed back a yawn. “Thanks.”
Mark gave my shoulder another squeeze and leaned in. “Do you prefer Nikki?”
His warm breath brushed my ear and sent an entirely inappropriate shiver down my arms. I did prefer Nikki, but only Uncle Stan had ever been brave enough to call me that. My parents insisted that they hadn’t named me Nikki. They’d named me Nicole. “Perhaps.”
“That’s what I’ll call you then.”
And then he was gone, leaving a warm spot on my shoulder and a bit of a bruise on my heart. Why was it that I only attracted married men?
Five minutes later, I nestled into Russ’ truck, with the heater blasting. Based on the way his face resembled a steamed beet, I had to guess he’d turned the temperature up ten degrees higher than he liked it for my sake.
“How long do you plan to stay in Fair Haven?” Russ asked as he turned onto the street in front of the church.
“I only have three days left before I’m due back to work.” I snuggled down into my coat. The warmth seeped into my bones. At last. “Hopefully that gives me enough time to sort through Uncle Stan’s house.”
“He left the place to you then?”
There was a strange note in Russ’ voice that I couldn’t quite identify. Maybe the warmth was making me drowsy, or maybe he was better at hiding his emotions than most people were.
“He did.” I trained my gaze onto the rain streaming in diagonal bands along the window instead of looking over at him, a trick I used to make people feel more comfortable. Reading people was an art form, my mom said. A lawyer needed to know when to make eye contact and when to break it to get the most out of someone. “I’ll need help understanding how Sugarwood works and making decisions about its future. If you’re willing.”
I peeked back in his direction.
“’Course, boss.” He said it with a grin, and whatever I thought I’d heard in his voice before was gone. “I’ve been working there since straight out of high school, before Stan ever bought the place. There’s not much I can’t tell you about it.”
Maybe it’d been concern for Sugarwood’s future and his job that I’d picked up on before. If he’d never worked anyplace else, a sudden change in ownership must be terrifying. How many sugar bushes could there be in the area to manage if I’d turned out to be a jerk?
The gentle whap-whap of the windshield wipers filled the cab.
I squirmed a little. Some part of my nature had never been comfortable with extended silences. Not sure what that said about me, but it probably wasn’t good. “So Uncle Stan talked about me a lot?”
“Nothing embarrassing or private. But he was so proud of you. I almost felt like you were my niece, I knew you so well.” His voice hitched a little. “I’m going to miss him.”
If he started to cry, there was no way I was going to hold it together. Seeing a man cry was my kryptonite. I needed to change the subject. Fast. To anything else.
My stupid brain stalled out on me and I grabbed the first thing I could form a solid thought around. “How would you feel about me staying on to help run Sugarwood? At least for a little while.”
The words came out in a jumble, my voice fast and panicked. But the question felt right somehow.
Uncle Stan wouldn’t have left me his business if he hadn’t thought I was making the right move to take a little time away from practicing law. He hadn’t been willing to make my decision for me, he’d said in his last email, but he wanted me to be careful that I didn’t look back on my life some day and regret how I’d spent it. This might be my only chance to figure out what I wanted from my life before the pressure to succeed and live up to what everyone else thought I should do trapped me on a path I didn’t necessarily want to be on.
I was so caught up in my thoughts that it took me a minute to realize Russ had answered me and was shooting glances in my direction.
I bit my bottom lip. “Sorry. I think I phased out there for a minute.”
“I said I’d much rather have someone here working with me than to run the place alone. But you don’t need to feel obligated to stay just ’cause Stan left you the place. He wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“That’s not it. It’s…”
I did feel obligated to stay, but not because I owned a business here. If I left without making sure Uncle Stan’s death was properly investigated, the guilt would eat me alive. It’d be like I’d abandoned the man who’d always been there when I needed him.
Right now I couldn’t seem to sort my emotions about leaving law from my emotions about losing Uncle Stan. I knew myself well enough to know that I wouldn’t be able to make a clear-headed decision about Sugarwood and my future until Uncle Stan’s murder was solved. Based on Chief Wilson’s declaration earlier this week, the only way to ensure that happened was to stay and investigate myself.
I shifted in my seat so I could face Russ better. This time I needed to see his face. I would stay and investigate Uncle Stan’s murder one way or another, but I wouldn’t move into his house at Sugarwood and learn the business if Russ was against it. This was his life and his world. It might only be a short stop on my journey. It wasn’t right to throw his life into chaos in the hope of making mine better.
A wave of nerves hit me out of nowhere, and I sucked my hands back into my sleeves to hide the twitch in my thumb. “I think this is the place I need to be right now. If you don’t mind taking on a greenhorn.”
Russ actually guffawed. “I think you have to be on a ranch to be a greenhorn.”
“And that shows how much I know about farm life right there. So would you be alright with me staying and learning the business? It might not be permanent.”
“I’ll teach you whatever you want to know. Sugarwood means a lot to me”—that strange note was back in his voice again—“and I’d like to know that the person who owns her cares about her too.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
He nodded and I faced the window again. I could barely make out the outline of The Sunburnt Arms ahead through the rain.
Now all I had to do was figure out how to investigate a case with “no leads,” as Chief Wilson had so bluntly pointed out. That, and tell my parents I planned to stay in Fair Haven indefinitely.
7
I put off the phone call to my parents. The longer I waited, the worse it would be, but my courage failed me. Calling them not only meant facing their wrath. It also meant committing to staying here. It meant traveling back to Virginia for my belongings and sub-leasing my apartment.
It felt huge and overwhelming.
Focusing on catching a killer, ironically enough, felt easier even though my one experience in the past with investigating had been a disaster and had been what finally pushed me to ask Uncle Stan’s advice about changing careers and risking excommunication by my parents.
By the time Russ picked me up the next morning for my tour of Sugarwood’s grounds, I’d decided that the best place to start digging into who might have killed Uncle Stan was to simply ask Russ. He’d been Uncle Stan’s best friend. If anyone would know about a grudge someone held against my uncle, it would be him.
He pulled his truck into a gravel parking lot. I hadn’t seen it through the trees when I came to the house with Chief Wilson and Mark. The lot butt
ed up to two buildings that sat about the width of a football field apart.
Russ pointed to the smaller of the two. “That’s the pump house. The sap from the trees comes down a system of tubes to the pump house, and from there we pump it into those vats.”
He nodded in the direction of cylindrical storage tanks that looked big enough to hold his pickup truck. The tanks nestled up to the side of the larger building, with its gray sides and green roof.
“The other building is our sugar shack,” he said.
I sank back in my seat. “I think I might have underestimated the scope of Uncle Stan’s business.”
Russ chuckled. “A lot of people do. We’re a commercial operation with over 15,000 trees, but when people hear sugar shack, they think about a wooden hut out in the woods. We do still have the original small sugar shack used over a hundred years ago when the first owner started tapping the sugar maples on his property, but we use it for the guided tours now.”
His laughter reminded me of how I’d imagined Santa Claus would sound back when I was a little kid. “But this is where the sap turns into maple syrup?”
“And maple butter and maple sugar. We have a separate building for putting together the candy and such, and a pancake house open year-round with a connected store. There’s also a stable near the original sugar shack for the horses and sleigh we use to take guests out into the woods in the winter. The snowshoe rentals happen from the office on the side of the stable as well.”
I definitely had not had the right picture about what Uncle Stan did with his time. When I’d asked to learn the business, I’d imagined spending my time stirring a vat of sticky goo with plenty of alone time to mull over my life.
Russ pushed open his truck door. “Let me show you.”
Inside the building, he walked me through the process, starting with the reverse osmosis machines for separating out some of the water from the sap. Apparently that sped up the process and gave them more control over the final product. They stored the pure water they extracted to use for cleaning the pipelines after the maple syrup season.
We finished with the stainless-steel evaporators—the modern way of boiling the sap until it turned thick and sweet. Each of the evaporators were long enough that I could have lain down inside. At the moment, they were empty and still.
So was the building, except for one man at the far end, tinkering with the insides of one of the evaporators. “Where is everyone? You must need more people than this to run things.”
“It’s the off-season. We have seasonal workers who help during the busy season, and then our full-time staff maintains things the rest of the year.”
All of those people could be potential suspects. Chief Wilson’s words about poking at rocks just to see what came out made more sense now.
Problem was, I didn’t necessarily want to come right out and ask Russ if any of them would have had a reason to kill Uncle Stan. It wasn’t public knowledge yet that his death was no longer considered an accidental overdose or suicide. The more people who knew, the more likely the small-town gossip mill would spread it everywhere. Right now, the killer would feel safe. Once word got out, he or she would be more vigilant.
We left the modern sugar shack, and Russ led the way down a well-manicured trail that he said extended for miles and was used by hikers in the summer. At this time of year, the trees were bare three-quarters of the way up, only their tops still bright red with leaves.
“The employees…” I picked up a maple leaf and spun it around in my fingers. “They all seem content? No major complaints?”
Russ’ bushy eyebrows drew down until they almost touched in the middle. “You should know your uncle better than that. He took good care of his employees.”
Grrr. I scuffed my toe into the leaves at the side of the trail. I clearly hadn’t thought through the implications of that question well enough.
Maybe there wasn’t a way to find out what I wanted to know without asking Russ directly. “What I meant was do you know if there was anyone who might want to hurt my uncle? Had he had an argument with anyone lately?”
His face went unnaturally still, as if he was trying not to react. “The police said Stan died because of something he did to himself.”
“They found new evidence,” I said softly. “Chief Wilson told me they’ve reopened the investigation.”
He turned away and continued down the trail. I scurried after him.
The trail opened up into another clearing. A driveway came into the same spot from the opposite direction.
Russ pointed to the larger of the two buildings. “That’s the stable.” He patted the front of the smaller building. “And this is the original sugar shack.”
Normally I would respect someone’s desire not to talk about a personal topic, but this was different. This had become a case. Besides, I was in too deep. He knew the truth about Uncle Stan’s death now. I needed to get something out of it in return in case the cost was everyone in town learning about it.
“I’m only trying to find out the truth,” I said.
“The truth is, even if someone did argue with Stan, that doesn’t mean they’d want to kill him. People fight. It don’t mean nothing.” He unlocked a padlock on the front of the sugar shack, and slid the door open. “This is probably more what you were imagining.”
It was. The “shack” was equipped with old-fashioned maple syrup equipment, including a small wood-fired boiler, all set up for demonstration purposes. Seeing it close-up, I felt stupid for imagining this was how they still made maple syrup. You could make enough in this building for yourself, but not to sell and make a living from.
“This hinged front door isn’t original, of course,” Russ was saying. “We added that to help with tours and keep the equipment safe at night.”
I’d go along with his attempted side track for a minute to give him some space and then circle back around to his comment about if someone did argue with Stan. He hadn’t denied that someone had.
I stepped up into the building. “You had problems with people damaging the equipment?”
Russ clamped a bungee cord onto the eye in the sliding door. The door bulged back against it as if wanting to close again. “Teenagers mostly. Before we had a solid door we could lock, they’d come in here at night to fool around, drink, smoke. You know the stuff kids do. Sometimes we’d find damage in the morning. Mostly your uncle was worried they’d light a fire in here for warmth and accidentally burn the place down.”
“You don’t think—”
“No.” Russ’ voice was sharp. “I don’t. They were kids and it was years ago.”
He spun around more quickly than someone of his shape should and laid a hand on the bungee cord. “Hey, did your uncle ever tell you the story of how we got ourselves trapped in here the first day we installed this door? We didn’t realize when we built it that the house sloped in the opposite direction and the door would always slam closed if it wasn’t hooked.”
Russ chattered on and I scrubbed my hands along the front of my jeans. How could I rephrase my questions to make them less objectionable to him? Was it that he didn’t want to think someone he knew might have harmed Uncle Stan? Or did he know something and he was afraid whoever came after Stan would come after him? I didn’t have enough information to even guess.
By the time I focused back on Russ, I’d missed most of his story.
He laughed. “After we’d been missing a good day, Noah reported it to the chief.”
“Noah?”
“He’s the one who maintains the equipment in the production building. You saw him when we were there.”
I nodded absently. Maybe if I came at it from the point of view that it wasn’t fair a murderer walked around enjoying their life while we’d had to attend Uncle Stan’s funeral. Surely Russ had a sense of justice. “So what happened? Who found you?”
“Carl.” He paused. “Chief Wilson, you know. And he nearly falls over laughing at us. We’ve never lived that down,
especially since it was the first time Stan and Carl met. The latch still sticks enough that you can’t get out if you accidentally close the door while you’re in here. That’s why we put on the hook.” He tapped his fingers on it. “We always meant to fix the latch so no one else would lock themselves in here by mistake, but something more important kept coming along. And it made for such a great story.”
He waved toward the driveway. “Come on. I’ll show you the shop and pancake house next.”
We stepped down from the building and he closed and padlocked the door.
He must have read my expression when he turned around because he sighed. “You’re so much like your uncle. You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
I’d heard that before—that I was more like Uncle Stan than like my own parents. “Can you think of anyone I should at least talk to? Anyone at all.”
“This isn’t the big city you’re used to. This is a small town full of people who’ve known each other their whole lives. No one here would want to kill Stan. Whatever the police think they’ve found, I don’t believe it means someone I’ve known my whole life is a killer.”
That explained my earlier question about why he was so resistant to even talking about it. I didn’t like the idea myself. In my nightmares I’d see Uncle Stan begging someone, a friend, a co-worker, not to do this. Still, it was better than the alternative—that he was so depressed that he gave up on what he believed in and couldn’t face another day. “You’d rather believe he killed himself?”
Russ looked away.
“Don’t you want to know who murdered your best friend? See them go to prison for what they’ve done?”
“Of course I would. But most of what you’re going to dig up by asking questions will only be misunderstandings, and you’ll cast suspicion on good people. This is a tourist town. People lose their jobs for less. If Stan was murdered”—he wagged a finger—“if he was, let the police look into it. It’s not your place.”
