Maple Syrup Mysteries Box Set 1: Books 1-3

by Emily James

  It made sense. Uncle Stan wouldn’t have been any more likely than I would to go easily and do what he was told. If he was going to die, he would have wanted to make it clear he was murdered. Carl Wilson pressed the only button that would have made Uncle Stan comply—he’d threatened to hurt someone my uncle cared about.

  “What was his endgame with Fay?” I asked.

  “Once he’d used the high doses of caffeine for long enough to establish a pre-existing heart condition, he planned to poison her with antifreeze. You found her when she’d finally taken in a lethal amount.”

  I’d heard of dogs and cats and raccoons dying from drinking antifreeze, something about it tasting sweet. It seemed like an ignoble way for such a lovely woman to die. “How did he get her to drink it without her knowing?”

  “The techs found it in a few different items in their fridge. Carl would have known which ones to avoid, and Fay would have slowly been killing herself.”

  “But wouldn’t the doctors have known? Surely antifreeze poisoning couldn’t have been considered accidental.”

  “He wasn’t aiming for accidental. Her death would have been ruled a heart attack. Her body would have metabolized the antifreeze, so unless we had a reason after her death to check for high amounts of calcium oxalate crystals in her tissues, a byproduct of the metabolism of antifreeze, no one would have suspected she was poisoned. Deaths from antifreeze poisoning often present as undetermined, and so the doctors will logically default to listing cause of death based on a prior health issue if there’s one on record.”

  Since Fay’s heart problems were well known by now, that would have been the official cause listed, and no one would have looked for anything further.

  I marched off at a pace that might have been a little too brisk. Wilson’s plan was premeditated murder at its height. He’d thought it through carefully, and he’d watched his wife slowly die. The unmerciful part of me wished he hadn’t made a plea and had found himself in the general population, where cops had a short life expectancy. Apparently mercy wasn’t one of my strengths, either.

  Fay might have broken her marriage vows, but she didn’t deserve to die.

  Mark grabbed my arm and drew me to a halt. I could feel the warmth of his hand through my jacket. My heart tugged in two directions, one warmed by Mark’s touch and the other by the care shown by Erik’s scarf and mittens.

  “You did a good thing,” Mark said. “If you hadn’t come here, insisting someone killed your uncle, Carl would have gotten away with it all. I hope you’ll reconsider staying.”

  I slipped out of his grip, continuing on the path back to my car a little more slowly now. I couldn’t bring Fay or Uncle Stan back, but Wilson wouldn’t hurt anyone else, and Russ wouldn’t be going to prison for something he didn’t do.

  Maybe I couldn’t make the world just or fair, but I didn’t have to spend my life working to put the guilty back out into the world in the name of due process, either. It was time to figure out what I wanted from my life and how I could make a positive difference.

  “I have to go back.”

  Mark’s expression fell.

  “But only to pack up my belongings and sub-let my apartment,” I said. “I’ll hopefully be back here before Christmas. If my first couple of weeks in Fair Haven are any indication, I certainly won’t be bored living here.”

  “Just wait,” Mark said with a grin. “It isn’t even tourist season yet.”

  Bonus Recipe: Maple-Glazed Pork ala Russ

  INGREDIENTS:

  2 1/2 pounds boneless pork loin roast

  1 cup real maple syrup

  4 tablespoons Dijon mustard

  2 1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

  2 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce

  1/4 teaspoon salt

  1/8 teaspoon pepper

  INSTRUCTIONS:

  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

  2. Mix together all the ingredients (except the pork loin, of course).

  3. Place the pork loin roast in a shallow roasting pan. Pour the glaze over the pork. Make sure it’s completely coated.

  4. Roast pork in the oven uncovered for about 1 hour or until a meat thermometer reaches the correct temperature for your desired doneness. Baste pork with glaze 2-3 times during roasting.

  5. Remove from oven and let rest 5-10 minutes before serving.

  6. If desired, you can serve the sauce from the pan alongside the meat.

  SERVES 8 people (or one person with lots of leftovers like Russ).

  For my husband the copy editor, who makes sure I don’t write desert when I mean dessert, because no one wants to eat a giant plate of sand.

  Every lie is two lies—the lie we tell others and the lie we tell ourselves to justify it.

  ROBERT BRAULT

  1

  If I were a superstitious person, I’d swear some supernatural force wanted to keep me out of Fair Haven. Last time I came into town, a tractor ran me off the road. This time, a January blizzard was trying to do the same.

  I leaned closer to my windshield, squinting, and kept my foot lightly on the gas pedal, inching my car forward. My headlights lit up the flakes into a swirling curtain, hiding everything around me. The only indicator that I was even on the road at all was the smoothness of the ground beneath my tires.

  Was it safe to stop in the middle of the road during a snowstorm and wait it out, or would someone else come along and run into me? Heavy snow days back home in Virginia meant an unexpected holiday. No one tried to fight their way through it, so I had zero experience with driving in snow. When I set out this morning, I’d checked the weather report for home and they called for clear skies. I’d forgotten how drastically the weather could change the farther north I drove.

  I shivered and cranked the heat. I hadn’t expected to stay away from Fair Haven for this long. When I left shortly after solving my Uncle Stan’s murder, I’d planned to be back within a couple of weeks, well before the heart of winter. But everything took longer than expected, from selling my furniture to subletting my apartment, and by then it was the holidays, and my mom insisted I stay until after Christmas. Given her way, I’d have stayed until spring.

  Maybe she’d been right. I was likely going to slide my car off the road and freeze to death out here in the middle of nowhere. The area around Fair Haven was notorious for its cell phone dead zones, so I’d have no guarantee of help if I had an accident, especially this late at night.

  My headlights flashed off something blue to the right of the road. The Fair Haven sign? Oh dear Lord, let it be the Fair Haven sign. At least then I’d be inside the town limits and able to walk to a house if I slid off the road.

  My car fishtailed, and my heart scrambled up into my throat. I jerked my foot off the gas and clenched my hands around the wheel. The car steadied.

  I let out a breath. This was going to be the last time I ever drove in a snowstorm.

  I eased my foot back onto the gas, and my car moved forward in a straight line again. The snow lessened slightly, and buildings on either side of the road came into view, more outlines than solid forms, but it was something. Hazy streetlights helped break up the darkness.

  The brick in my chest dissolved. I was going to make it.

  My car smashed into something, jerking to a halt and sending me forward. The seat belt caught across my chest and yanked me back before my head hit the steering wheel.

  I slammed my foot on the brake and threw the car into park. My hands shook. What had I hit? The buildings hunkered down against the storm on either side of me, so I had to still be on the road. Maybe I’d clipped the corner of a white car or truck parked on the side of the street? I wouldn’t be able to see a white vehicle in the snow and darkness.

  But the impact felt like it came from in front, and I’d swear I felt my wheels try to ride up over something and fail. A deer? Could I have hit a deer? Deer on the road were a common problem in Virginia, but I had no idea how prevalent they were here and in
a snowstorm. Hopefully it wasn’t a deer. It made me want to cry thinking about an animal suffering.

  Maybe I’d just run into a huge snow drift.

  I opened my car door and a burst of wind rushed in, sending a shiver coursing over my body. Thankfully the scarf Erik gave me the last time I saw him spared me from snow down my collar.

  I picked my way toward the front, running a hand along my car to keep from slipping. It was clear as soon as I neared the tire that I hadn’t clipped another vehicle. There wasn’t one anywhere nearby. Northerners were probably wise enough not to leave their cars parked on the street during a snowstorm.

  I rounded the front bumper and froze. A body lay face-down in the street.

  I hadn’t hit a deer. I hit a person.

  2

  What had I done? I hadn’t even seen him—the short hair and size of the body said it had to be a man. He couldn’t be dead, could he? My car wasn’t going that fast.

  My legs seemed to have iced over and frozen to the ground. Part of me said I should check him, and the other part said I should call 9-1-1 first.

  I skidded back to my car and grabbed my purse out of the open door. If he were seriously injured, I wouldn’t know where to start to help him. I needed to get an ambulance here as soon as possible.

  The screen on my cell phone glowed to life. No signal. I dialed 9-1-1 anyway. The phone beeped in my ear. Useless. I heaved it and my purse back inside the car.

  Maybe he was dazed, not unconscious. If he could walk, I could get him into the car and drive him to the hospital. That had to be better than leaving him out in the snow while I went for help.

  I ran back to the front of my car and half fell, half knelt beside him. He lay face first in the snow. “Sir, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  I touched a hand to the back of his neck. His skin was warm to the touch. That seemed like a good sign. “Sir?”

  I didn’t dare shake him, and turning him over seemed more dangerous. His back or neck might be injured. Was he even breathing? I pressed my palm to his back, straining to feel any movement. It didn’t seem like he was breathing, but perhaps his breaths were too shallow to feel.

  My hands shook. I lifted his arm from the snow and pressed two fingers into his wrist. No pulse. But maybe I wouldn’t be able to feel one since his arm had been lying in the snow. He wasn’t even wearing a coat. I stripped mine off and laid it over top of him.

  I couldn’t remember the TV show I’d heard it on, but wasn’t there some saying about you weren’t dead until you were warm and dead. The snow might be a good thing. It might protect him and give me time to bring help for him. I’d leave my coat. Cold was one thing. Hypothermia was entirely another.

  The snow had lightened a bit more. I squinted against the flakes. The buildings lining the street were businesses, their lights off and signs flipped to closed, but I recognized the fish and chips place, A Salt & Battery. It was only a couple blocks over from the police station and a guaranteed landline to call for medical assistance.

  I climbed back into my car and backed up, navigating around the man in the street. I sent out a prayer that I was making the right choice to leave him and that no one else would run him over in the time it took me to bring back help.

  I’d started experimenting with prayer after my Uncle Stan died. My parents were agnostic, but Uncle Stan had believed in a higher power. The events of the past few months had shown me clearly that I wanted to be more like him than I was like my parents. Trying the praying thing seemed like an easy way to start, though I’d soon have to decide if I wanted to learn more because it was getting weird calling whoever I was talking to “Uncle Stan’s God.”

  My car slid a couple of times on the way to the police station, but I managed to keep it on the road. I parked out front of the station.

  When I pulled on the station door, it didn’t budge. A jolt shot through me like I was falling down a flight of stairs. Were the doors locked? Fair Haven had a small police force. Maybe they didn’t staff the station in a blizzard. If there wasn’t anyone here, I’d have to drive around, trying to get a signal on my phone.

  I yanked the door again, and the coating of ice popped, making it suddenly visible. The door flew open.

  I stumbled inside and up to the front desk. The man behind it glanced up, and his eyes widened. He probably hadn’t expected anyone to stumble through his door at close to midnight in the middle of a snowstorm. The wide eyes, along with his oversized glasses, made him look a bit like an owl.

  “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “I hit someone with my car over by A Salt & Battery. They need help.”

  At least that’s what I intended to say. My whole body was shaking, and my teeth chattered, making me slur my words a bit and sound like I might be high.

  Owl Man scowled at me, and he pointed toward the chairs, already reaching for the radio. “Take a seat,” he said to me.

  The cold, hard metal of the bench that ran the length of the wall didn’t help my shivering. The image of the man’s body lying in front of my car kept playing over in my mind. That man was someone’s father or brother or son.

  I needed to lie down or I was going to pass out.

  I stretched out on the bench, trying not to think about how frequently—or, more likely, infrequently—it was cleaned. It was either the bench or face-planting on the floor.

  I had the vague notion that my mind was wandering, but I couldn’t seem to bring it back.

  Then Owl Man stood over me. I knew he was saying something, but it was nearly impossible to focus. I thought I caught the words stupid drunk.

  He hauled me up, and my legs tried to buckle underneath me. He supported me down a narrow hallway and unlocked a cell door.

  Was he putting me in a cell? Why was he putting me in a cell? The law in Michigan couldn’t be that different from the law in Virginia. I hadn’t run the man down on purpose, and I’d immediately sought help for him. I hadn’t been speeding or drinking. Accidental deaths didn’t bring criminal charges.

  I wanted to say all that, but my lips felt heavy and thick and disconnected from my brain. Maybe I was dying, too. Maybe the impact had been harder than I thought and I was bleeding internally. News headlines in Fair Haven’s mid-week paper would read Freak Snowstorm Accident Claims Two Lives.

  Owl Man dropped me more roughly than necessary onto the cot, and the world went black.

  3

  Something soft and feathery tickled my cheek. I peeled open one eye. Soft, feathery, and blue. My scarf. I’d worn my scarf to bed?

  The events of the night before came back in an avalanche. I wasn’t in my bed. I wasn’t even in Uncle Stan’s house. I squeezed my eyes shut again. By now the man I’d hit would either be recovering in the hospital or lying on a slab in the morgue. I pushed the thought away before it made me want to pass out again.

  I opened my eyes and swung my still-booted feet off the bed. The cell around me appeared to be meant for a single person. The cot underneath me butted up against the longer wall, perpendicular to the bars. A toilet hunkered on the opposite side of the room, next to a cracked sink with a bar of white soap. The soap didn’t look new.

  A shudder traced its way over my shoulders. Boy did I hope my bladder could hold what I drank yesterday until someone came to get me. There wasn’t exactly a door on this place. I didn’t know yet if someone was in the cell across the way, and who knew if there were cameras monitoring the cells. I certainly didn’t want to flash anyone who might have a view of this cell. Avoiding someone in Fair Haven was like trying not to smell the BO of the person sitting next to you on the Metro.

  I stood and stretched my arms over my head. My kinks had knots. The motion moved my keys in the pocket of my jeans.

  I turned in a quick circle. My purse wasn’t with me, but that wasn’t exactly strange. I couldn’t remember if I even brought it in, and if I had, the officer who put me in the cell last night probably confiscated it. What was odd was that they’d lef
t me with everything else. They should have taken away at least my scarf and shoelaces in case remorse over whatever I’d supposedly done drove me to suicide.

  To my memory, I hadn’t been officially charged or booked and fingerprinted either. Had any of that happened, I’d be asking for my phone call and contacting my mom. Even though I’d decided to maintain my license to practice law for now, I knew better than to try to represent myself in anything more serious than a traffic ticket.

  Keys rattled behind me, and I spun around. The man on the other side of the door was wiry and balding, the remains of his light brown hair creating a horseshoe on his head. He was the same one who was kind to Russ when Russ and I spent an unfortunate few hours in a police interrogation room right before I returned to Virginia.

  His name started with a Q. Quinn? No Quincey. Problem was, I didn’t know whether that was his first name or his last name. If I really had done something wrong last night, it wouldn’t help my case to call an officer by his first name.

  He pulled open the door and froze, as if he’d only now looked at me closely enough to recognize me. “Miss. Dawes.”

  It didn’t seem like the right time to correct him that my last name was really Fitzhenry-Dawes. Everyone here knew me as Stan Dawes’ niece, and I’d probably end up having to accept being called Nicole Dawes. The hyphenated last name seemed to trip people up. Hopefully my mom and dad would never need to know.

  I peeked at his name tag. Dornbush. Quincey must be his first name. “Nice to see you again, Officer Dornbush. I wish the circumstances were better this time than last time, but…” I shrugged. Most people only encountered the police under less-than-wonderful circumstances.

  His gaze flickered from my scarf and down to my boots. “You’re the drunk hit-and-run driver?”