Maple Syrup Mysteries Box Set 1: Books 1-3

by Emily James

  But if Mark had found something that would make me look guilty, I wanted to know about it right away and have a chance to discuss it with them before it made it to official legal channels.

  “I’ll come along.”

  Mark took us down the hall and stopped outside the door I remembered from when I’d come here to make arrangements for my Uncle Stan’s funeral and had insisted upon seeing his body. The door led into the mortuary fridge.

  Mark and Erik led the way through the door marked Staff Only and stopped beside a body laid out on a gurney. I stuttered to a stop one step inside the room. I’d expected to have more time to prepare myself. When I asked to see Uncle Stan’s body, they’d had to bring him out of the fridge. I’d had a moment to steel myself. But Mark must have left Paul’s body out in expectation of Erik’s arrival.

  No way was I going to be a weakling and back out now, though. I drew in a deep breath. The sharp disinfectant aroma of the room bit into my nose and seemed to send courage down through me. I straightened my shoulders and joined the men.

  I barely remembered what the man I’d hit looked like. He’d been face-down, and I’d been so concerned with helping him that I hadn’t taken much notice of his appearance at the time. Now I got my first clear look.

  Even before death, he must have been fair-skinned, and if he’d been standing, I imagine he would have been close to Mark’s height, maybe a bit over six feet. He had a gaunt look to him, like a neatly-trimmed version of a scarecrow.

  And his name was Paul. I wanted to try to remember it and think of him that way rather than as the man or the body. It seemed like I owed him that level of respect at least. He might be only a dead body now, but not that long ago he’d been alive and he’d been Erik’s friend.

  Seeing him there and working through that, something in my brain shifted a bit. I wouldn’t call it closure exactly, but it felt like a step in that direction. Like a time would come when thinking about what had happened wouldn’t send me over the edge. I just had to hang on until I got there.

  “Here’s what I called you to see.” Mark pulled on a pair of latex gloves, rolled Paul’s torso slightly to the side, and pointed with a ball point pen to a tiny spot on the side of Paul’s neck. “Do you see that?”

  Erik and I both leaned in at the same time and barely avoided cracking our heads together.

  My face burned, and I stepped back. I had to remember I was a spectator here and this was his case. “You first, obviously.”

  He gave me his lip-twitch of a smile, though it was a little tighter than usual. He bent to within a hand’s breadth of Paul’s neck and squinted. “Is that a needle puncture?”

  “And based on the location, it’s highly unlikely that it was self-inflicted.” Mark lowered Paul back to the table. “The bruising on his body was also post-mortem and consistent with Nicole’s car hitting him when he was in a prone position.”

  Mark mimed a flat body with one hand and my car running into it, like a giant speedbump, with the other.

  I stumbled back a step. He was already dead when I hit him? “But he was still warm. He still felt warm.”

  Mark reached toward me, glanced down at his gloved hands, and retracted his arms partway, like he wasn’t sure whether it was more important to comfort me or to keep from touching me with corpse-hands.

  “He likely died a few minutes before you came along, so he would have still been warm. I won’t know anything more definitive until I get the results back on what was in his blood, but my best guess right now is that he was attacked, stumbled out into the street looking for help, and whatever he’d been injected with killed him.”

  I rubbed my fingers into my forehead, along the line above my eyebrows, and the tension pooled there started to release. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “You didn’t kill him,” Mark said.

  The lawyerly part of my brain apparently recovered more quickly than the rest of me because all the implications of Mark’s declaration were spinning around in my head, demanding attention. “That means someone else did, and my collision with his body meant you’ve wasted time looking at the wrong crime scene.”

  Erik already had his phone in his hand. “I’ll call the crime scene techs and have them cordon off the animal shelter. It’s less than a hundred yards away.”

  My gaze jumped between the two men. Mark was nodding, but my lack of knowledge about the town meant I wasn’t following. “Why the animal shelter?”

  Erik was already talking to someone on his phone.

  Mark peeled off his gloves and dropped them into a trash can. “Paul was the manager of the local shelter. When the weather forecast called for heavy snow, he’d sometimes sleep in his office to make sure there’d be someone able to take care of the animals in the morning. Given how close his body was to the shelter, it’s likely that’s what he was doing and that he was attacked there.”

  I squished my eyes closed. Paul sounded, at least from the little I knew of him, like a decent man. That assessment was strengthened by the fact that he’d been Erik’s friend. Why would someone have killed him?

  A warm hand slid along the side of my face.

  My eyes popped open.

  Mark stood in front of me, much too close. He cupped my cheek in his hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Nikki,” he said softly.

  My mouth went dry. The man really should have been a movie star instead of a medical examiner, and if he kept looking at me the way he was, I was going to kiss him, right here next to a dead body with Erik standing only a few feet away.

  Mark couldn’t realize what his touch did to me. He’d admitted to me before that he struggled with social interactions. It was possible he simply didn’t know that this wasn’t the way you treated a girl who was a friend as opposed to a girlfriend. Although my track record said I might not be the best one to judge a man’s sincerity, Mark didn’t strike me as the type who would cheat on his wife.

  Erik cleared his throat beside us, and I jerked away from Mark’s touch. Then I mentally kicked myself. Pulling away like that probably only made us seem more guilty, not less. Not that there was anything to be guilty for. I hadn’t actually done anything. I’d only thought about it.

  “I’d better take you home.” Erik zipped up his jacket. “And I’ll have your car towed to Quantum Mechanics.”

  Tony, the owner of Quantum Mechanics, had done a great job repairing my car when I’d driven it over a fence last fall, so I was confident he could take care of whatever damage I’d done to it last night.

  “Thanks.” I stifled a yawn. I’d slept a full eight hours or more, but it seemed like the emotional toll of the last day was finally catching up to me. “Home sounds good.”

  Mark moved in close enough that our arms bumped. “I’ll take her home. You probably have a lot of work to do, and I’m in a holding pattern until the test results come in.”

  Something flashed across Erik’s face. I couldn’t tell if it was relief, reluctance, or something else entirely—like censure. If I were him, I’d think we were having an affair too. Unintentionally, Mark had made it look like we were a couple, and I’d contributed to it. My reaction to his touch had surely been blazing from my face.

  “That’s probably for the best,” Erik said. “Give me a call when the test results come back.”

  The fatigue I’d heard before was back in his voice. It was a different situation, but I thought I might know a little how he felt. When Uncle Stan died, my ability to grieve was limited by my need to take care of things and investigate his death. Erik couldn’t grieve for his friend now because he had to investigate his murder. The need to hold yourself together made you tired in a way that went far beyond your physical body.

  “I’ll give you a call if I have any questions,” Erik said to me.

  Which I couldn’t help but notice was different than saying he’d call me, as in call me to talk or call me to ask me out again. He definitely thought Mark and I were having an affair, but there was nothing I cou
ld say right now to change his mind—not with Mark standing next to me.

  Once he was gone, I talked Mark out of taking me to the hospital, though he did subject me to twenty questions and a quick check over himself to make sure I was okay.

  I rotated both arms for him, supposedly the last exercise in his exam. “I wasn’t going that fast, you know. It was more the shock of it than anything else.”

  “Still.” He smiled down at me with those heart-melting dimples of his. “I couldn’t forgive myself if I let you walk away injured.”

  Warmth flared in my chest and coursed down through the rest of my body. Mark had this way of looking at me like I was a masterpiece, special and unique and worthy of a pedestal.

  That sort of adoration was hard to resist, especially for me. The therapist I’d started seeing after I found out my last boyfriend, Peter, was married and a pathological liar said the slang term for it was daddy issues. Since I’d never received the approval I needed from my dad growing up, I lost my better judgment when a man gave it to me now. It’s how I’d been so easily tricked by Peter.

  And if I wasn’t careful, I was going to cross more than emotional lines with Mark because of it.

  When Mark was satisfied I wasn’t hurt, we headed out for his truck. He helped me up into it and even buckled me in.

  I folded my hands in my lap as he walked around to the driver’s side. I’d hoped that because we’d kept things light while I’d been gone that this wouldn’t be an issue, that we could simply be friends. Turned out, I still couldn’t do it. Worse, the way he acted seemed to indicate that my feelings weren’t one-sided.

  Maybe I had it all wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time that I’d mistaken nice and caring for interested. The one thing I knew for sure was we needed to talk about it. I’d rather look like a fool than risk becoming a willing adulteress. At least with Peter, I hadn’t known he was married.

  If Mark felt nothing for me beyond friendship, I’d let him decide whether we continued spending time with each other or not. If he felt the way I did, we’d have to break this off.

  Mark started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot, heading down the road in the direction of Sugarwood, the maple syrup bush and store I’d inherited from my Uncle Stan.

  I quietly drew in a deep breath and sucked my hands up into the sleeves of Erik’s coat to hide how much they were shaking. “I think there are some things we need to talk about.”

  He flashed me his dimples again. “There are, but now’s not the time. Right now you need to rest. Do you want to stop and grab something to eat?”

  I shook my head. Not only was my appetite completely gone, but I couldn’t tell if he knew what I was talking about and wanted to avoid it or if he’d missed my meaning entirely. “I just want to go home and get to sleep.”

  “Fair enough.”

  We drove in silence the rest of the way. Mark probably assumed I was too tired to talk. When we pulled up in front of Uncle Stan’s—my house, he helped me out of the truck again and walked me to the door.

  I pulled my keys from my pocket. Thankfully I hadn’t left them in the car or I’d have no way to get into the house.

  I went to slide them into the lock, but the door swung open at my touch.

  I couldn’t think of any good reason why my door would be unlocked. Since I hadn’t planned to be gone long, I’d left the electricity and water turned on. There’d been no need for anyone to enter the house to turn them off or back on again.

  “Mark,” I called, backing up from the door.

  He turned back.

  When he reached my side, I pointed at the slightly open door. “I think someone’s in my house.”

  6

  I couldn’t catch a freaking break. All I wanted was a hot bath and to climb into bed, and now I had to worry about whether someone had robbed my home, and worse, whether or not they were still in there somewhere.

  For a brief moment, I considered banging my head against the wall out of sheer frustration. “Should we call the police?”

  “I am the police.”

  I raised my eyebrows, giving him my best since when? look.

  Mark shrugged. “I work with the police. Besides, you know how busy they are.”

  That was true. The last thing Erik needed was me adding yet another thing onto his plate. Besides, it was daylight, and there were two of us. Surely that made it safe enough for us to at least investigate on our own.

  I glanced back at Mark’s truck. “I don’t suppose you carry a gun in that thing.”

  “Dang it, Jim. I’m a doctor, not a cowboy,” he said, in a pretty passable impression of Dr. Leonard McCoy.

  I cracked up and slapped both hands over my mouth. Mark turned red in the face like he was holding in laughter as well.

  “If there is someone in there, they know we’re coming now,” I said. “We would never make it as cat burglars.”

  Mark was still grinning. “I guess it’s a good thing we’re on the right side of the law, then.”

  All the mirth drained out of me. Unless we wanted to bother Erik over what might be nothing, we needed to search my house, and I didn’t want to go in empty handed. I motioned to Mark to follow me. Uncle Stan had a little shed out back next to his trash cans. I hadn’t looked inside when I was here before, but if I knew my uncle, he had rakes and shovels and all those yard-care kinds of things.

  I checked inside. Jackpot. I handed Mark the shovel and took the rake for myself.

  Mark quirked an eyebrow. “What am I supposed to do? Bludgeon the burglar to death if he’s in there?”

  I shuddered. Definitely not. I’d seen enough death in the last twenty-four hours.

  Mark’s face sobered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  I waved it away and headed back to the house. Mark stopped me and went in first, shovel held up like a top-heavy baseball bat. I had to hold back a snicker. We looked like we belonged in a slapstick comedy.

  I tiptoed in behind him. Mark headed toward the kitchen. I peeled off in the direction of the family room.

  The lights were off, but sunlight streamed through the three floor-to-ceiling windows. The room looked empty, but it also held a couch and a recliner that could easily provide a hiding place.

  I wiped a damp palm on my jeans. I’d lived alone since graduating from law school, and I’d never once felt afraid in my home. But since Uncle Stan was murdered in this house and I was almost blown up thanks to a man-made gas leak, I found myself a little less confident.

  I edged toward the couch. A floor board squeaked beneath my foot. I jumped and a head popped up from the couch.

  I screamed and swung, black dots of panic dancing in my vision. My target yelped and ducked.

  I recognized the voice. My heart rate dropped back closer to normal, and I lowered my rake. “Russ?”

  Russel Dantry’s head came back into view, his grey hair mussed up like he’d been napping.

  Mark plowed into the room, shovel raised. His gaze hopped to Russ, and he skidded to a stop. “I heard yelling.”

  Russ scrubbed his hand over his eyes. “Nikki nearly decapitated me.”

  All the stress of the past day must have been making me giddy. I tried to hold back laughter and snorted instead. “That’s what you get for hiding in my house. What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.” Russ eased to his feet, his movements slow and stiff, a rare sign of his age, and stretched his arms above his barrel-shaped torso. His back cracked. “When you were late and I couldn’t get you on your cell, I started to worry. Figured I’d come here and wait so I’d know first thing if you showed up. I must have dozed off somewhere around dawn.”

  It’d been a long time since anyone had waited up for me to come home. But then again, even in high school I’d been hyper-responsible, setting my own curfew and abiding by it.

  Russ’ mention of not being able to reach me on my phone reminded me that he wouldn’t be the only one worried about me.

  “C
an I borrow your cell for a second?” I asked Mark. “I should text my mom and my best friend to let them know I made it here safely. They’re probably worried, too.”

  I used Mark’s phone to quickly message my mom and Ahanti and let them know that I wasn’t sure when I’d have my phone back. So much of Fair Haven was a cellular dead zone that I might not even miss my phone…at least for a day or two.

  Russ came around the couch, and Mark handed him the shovel.

  Mark touched his forehead like he was doffing a cap. “Now that we’ve secured the castle, m’lady, I need to get back to the office. I’ll call you later.”

  He let himself out.

  Russ stuck a hand in his pocket and it came out holding a key. “Still have this from when it was your uncle’s place.” He extended his hand toward me, across the back of the couch. “I can give it back if you want.”

  Russ had been my Uncle Stan’s best friend as well as the manager of Sugarwood. I should have realized he might still have a key to the house, but my mind wasn’t super clear right now. Regardless, Russ seemed like my best choice to hold a spare. “Keep it. That way if I get locked out, you can rescue me.”

  “That’s what partners are for.”

  While I’d been away, I had managed to complete a couple pieces of important business. I’d taken care of the necessary tasks and paperwork to be able to practice law in Michigan, and Russ and I had signed a partnership agreement, making him half owner of Sugarwood. Since he and Uncle Stan had been talking about doing the same prior to Uncle Stan’s death, it’d seemed like the right thing to do.

  And, frankly, I needed the help.

  Russ nudged me toward the kitchen. “Come on. I’ll make you a cup of coffee.” He tugged on the sleeve of Erik’s coat. “Looks to me like you have a story to tell.”

  Russ and I had originally planned to start my training in Sugarwood’s operations my first day back, but when I nodded off in the middle of a sentence, we postponed for the following day.