by Emily James
As hard as I tried to control my tone, my voice came out sounding like a mom who’d found her child playing in the street, that unique combination of angry and terrified. That was going to be enough to ignite Fair Haven’s rumor mill all by itself. Hopefully the employees would assume it was another glip in production. I was the newbie, after all. No one would be surprised if all the problems we’d already had flustered me.
And since Russ had a predisposition toward discretion, hopefully he wouldn’t ask what was wrong. The last thing I wanted to do was broadcast Noah’s condition over the radio system for all our employees to hear.
“Where at? Over.” The careful question let me know that he understood not to ask for more information right now.
“Out at the stable. Over.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” a female voice said from behind me.
I turned back toward the stable. The EMTs rolled a stretcher out the double-wide door meant for the sleigh. Noah was strapped in, one EMT working on him as they moved. That was a good sign, right? They must think there was something they could do for him.
I moved after them, but the officer blocked my path.
She was tall for a woman, and I had to look up into her face. “Am I not allowed to go with him?”
“You can follow later, but it’ll be better if you don’t join him in the ambulance.”
I leaned around her and watched as they loaded Noah. They kept the lights on and sped off. It was hard to watch them go and not be able to immediately follow. Who would give them the emergency contact information for Noah’s next of kin? And if Russ and I weren’t there when the doctor spoke to his family, who knew how long we’d have to wait before we found out his condition. There’d been so much blood on the ground under him. What if he…
The blood on the snow drew my gaze again. The officer followed my gaze with her own.
Her face hardened into a wall of expressionless steel. The tight bun in her slicked-back black hair added to the impression of inflexibility. “I need to ask you a few questions.”
Had Erik or Officer Quincey Dornbush been the one to respond to the call, they would have offered to talk somewhere away from the smear, but it seemed like a similar offer wouldn’t be forthcoming today. In fact, from the way she stared me down, she felt a lot more like a foe than an ally. It was a relationship dynamic I should be used to after my time as a criminal defense attorney, but I wasn’t a lawyer now. I was a distraught witness. And she already had a terrible crime-scene-side manner.
I’d be polite even if she wasn’t going to show concern for me. Taking care of Noah and finding out how he ended up bleeding on the ground was more important than anything else.
“I’m happy to help,” I said.
Her deadpan expression didn’t even flicker into something closer to compassion. “That’s an interesting choice of words. How about you tell me what happened.”
Great. So that’s how this was going to play out. As if the situation wasn’t already bad enough, the responding officer wanted to look at me as a suspect because I’d used the word happy. Obviously I hadn’t actually meant joyful.
The less defensive side of me said the blood on my hand and the fact that I’d been in such a hurry to wipe it off might have had something to do with it as well.
I went through a more detailed version of what I’d told the 9-1-1 operator. “Then I sat with him until I heard the sirens.”
“Nicole!” Russ’ voice called from across the clearing.
He hustled across the snow, looking a lot like a short-legged bulldog plowing his way along.
The female officer’s face softened. “Hey, Russ. I was hoping the next time I saw you would be when I brought the kids for their yearly sleigh ride rather than under circumstances like this. I’m so sorry.”
“Elise.” Russ’ words came out on an out-of-breath huff. “What happened?”
“It’s Noah. Can’t tell yet if it was an accident or intentional.” She swung her gaze toward me on the last word.
Clearly it was only me she was stonewalling. I wanted to say give me a break, but I bit down on my lip instead. This was taking the whole “everyone who hasn’t lived here for at least ten years is an outsider” thing a bit too far. I couldn’t think of any other reason she’d be so certain I’d had something to do with Noah’s condition. I’d called it in after all, and I’d waited around for help to arrive.
“I found him unconscious in Key’s stall.” I may have emphasized found him a little more than was absolutely necessary. At least I had the self-restraint not to glare at the woman who thought I’d actually harm someone on purpose.
Elise swiveled her gaze back to me. “You might not want Russ present for the rest of our chat.”
I started to cross my arms over my chest, then remembered one hand was still partly covered in Noah’s blood. That thought took some of the fight out of me and the snarky answer fizzled out before hitting my lips. “I’m fine with Russ being here.”
Russ might know more about who would want to hurt Noah or how Noah might have gotten himself injured than I did anyway, and if she sent him away, she wouldn’t get the information she needed to solve this.
She shrugged in a don’t-say-I-didn’t-warn-you way. “Based on your reputation, I have to ask. What was the nature of your relationship with Noah?”
Based on my reputation? The only reputation I knew of was one for running my car into things I shouldn’t. That wouldn’t exactly affect this situation unless she thought I’d run Noah down and dragged his body to the stable. “He’s my employee, so I’m not the best one to ask if you want to know about his personal life.”
I glanced at Russ with what I hoped was a look that said jump in anytime. He was either oblivious or he didn’t want to share what he knew about Noah. Or maybe there really wasn’t anything to say and I was making assumptions. With all I’d been involved in lately, I’d become even more paranoid than usual. Probably something I should bring up to my counselor in our next session.
“I was talking about your personal relationship with Noah,” Elise said.
Oohhh. She was implying… I’d never even thought about Noah that way. He was close to fifteen years older than me and, other than Sugarwood, we had nothing in common as far as I knew. If I had committed a crime, it certainly wouldn’t have been a crime of passion.
“Nicole and Noah weren’t like that,” Russ said before I could.
Elise’s eyebrows crept up toward her hairline. “I’d like to hear it from her because the rumors around town say different.”
I highly doubted the gossip mill was saying anything of the sort. Noah and I had never gone anywhere together unless you counted the hardware store, and the only time I interacted with him at Sugarwood was when he was teaching me how to drive the sleigh and care for the horses or when something needed repairing. Which meant she was likely shaking the tree to see if any fruit fell out.
She was going to go hungry. “I’m not sure where the rumors are coming from, but it’s strictly professional.”
Her eyebrows flat-lined, like she’d expected me to deny it but was disappointed nonetheless. “Then do you have any guesses as to how this might have happened?”
As an interrogator, she was green. It felt like she’d gotten most of her techniques from a TV cop show rather than from experience in the field. She didn’t look young enough for this to be her first investigation, but then again, Fair Haven had a reputation as a sleepy little tourist town. It wasn’t until the previous police chief left his position that we found out how much he’d been glossing over and covering up, allowing crime to run unchecked as long as it stayed hidden. I was sure there was even more going on than we knew.
Despite her amateur interview skills, I did need to answer her questions as best I could. My gut said someone had hurt Noah, but I hadn’t had a chance to figure out yet why I felt that way. That suspicion didn’t help with answering the how either. I could be wrong.
“I don’t know
how this happened,” I said. “But Noah had more safety rules for dealing with the horses than he did for dealing with the machinery.”
And still Russ said nothing. I waited for Elise to ask him a direct question.
Another police car rolled up and more officers I only vaguely recognized climbed out and headed for the stable, presumably to tape off the scene and collect evidence.
Elise tugged on the cuffs of her gloves. “We’ll have more questions once the doctor makes his report on the nature of Noah’s injuries. Make sure you’re available.”
She strode back into the stable. What the heck? Had that been her version of don’t leave town? It definitely felt like a personal vendetta now. We’d never even officially met before and I didn’t think I had a guilty-looking face.
Russ laid a hand on my shoulder. “Come on. I’ll drive us to the hospital.”
I followed him back along the path toward the modern sugar shack. Noah’s blood on my hand was dried now, which was almost worse. My skin felt tight and itchy. My fingers tensed with the conflicting desires to scrape it off with my nails and to not touch it. At least this time I wasn’t going into shock the way I had when I’d run my car into a person during a snow storm. I was either getting stronger or desensitized. Maybe you couldn’t be one without the other.
I strapped myself in. Elise’s attitude and words replayed in my mind. For all my professional and dating failures, one thing I’d never struggled with was making friends. People tended to like me, and I’d come to take it for granted. Elise clearly didn’t like me, and it felt like it was about more than that I’d been the one to find Noah. I could say the same about Fair Haven in general, though. I’d struggled to make many real connections.
I scrubbed a thumb over my knuckles. “Is Elise always like that?”
It felt weird calling her by her first name, but I’d forgotten to look at her name tag, and she’d skipped the introductions.
Russ shrugged. “Sometimes. She’s got well-behaved kids.”
For a moment I debated whether thunking my head against the window would be more productive than trying to wring information out of Russel Dantry. Since showing up with a giant bruise on my forehead would only fan the suspicion surrounding my discovery of Noah, I opted for stuffing my hands into the pockets of my coat and letting the topic of Elise drop. What she thought of me wasn’t really important. Once the matter moved up the chain to Erik, he’d make sure the investigation went in a more production direction.
In the meantime, we needed to figure out what information might help the police the most. “Do you think Key could have done this to Noah?”
“I didn’t see Noah, so I can’t really say.”
That was a good point. I hadn’t considered before how Noah had been positioned, but he’d been lying face up, and the wound that seemed to be bleeding so profusely had been on the back of his head. Key could have knocked him down, but it seemed like he couldn’t have delivered the actual wound. Maybe that was why my instincts insisted this wasn’t an accident.
That, and he shouldn’t have been in Key’s stall and in a position to be knocked down at all.
One of the first rules Noah taught me about working with the horses was that I should never handle them loose in the stall. Even though our horses were extremely gentle, if they spooked, they could crush me without meaning to. I was supposed to bring them out and do what he called cross-tying them. Each side of the aisle had a rope attached to the wall, with a clip on the other end that attached to the rings on each side of the horse’s halter. It kept them quiet and steady for grooming, caring for their hooves, or putting on their tack to pull the sleigh.
So Noah shouldn’t have been in Key’s stall in a position to be knocked down hard enough to smash his head open.
The seatbelt suddenly felt like it was cutting into my flesh. I took my hands from my pockets and pulled the belt away from me.
Noah was either negligent or someone had attacked him after all. A suspicion of either could have caused Russ’ anxious response to Noah going AWOL. “Is there anyone who might have a reason to hurt Noah? Or did you have a reason to think he might have done something to get himself hurt?”
“Nicole.” Russ’ voice took on a warning tone, not unlike a parent who wanted their child to stop pushing for something.
Normally I enjoyed Russ playing the role of surrogate uncle, but not today. Today I wasn’t his “niece,” nor was I poking my nose in where it didn’t belong. I was his partner, Noah was my employee, and I’d been the one sitting in a puddle of his blood. Not to mention Elise thought I’d had something to do with it. I needed to know how much or how little I could actually trust Noah with in the future…assuming he survived.
I also needed to know if someone dangerous might have come onto our property.
The thought alone brought goosebumps down my arms. After what happened less than two months ago in our bush, I already didn’t feel safe walking the grounds alone anymore. It’d only been in the last week or so that I’d felt secure enough to go back and forth in the daylight without always taking the dogs or another person with me.
“If you have a suspicion about why this happened, I deserve to know about it. Sugarwood is as much mine as it is yours.”
Russ’ shoulders still rode high, stiff and unnaturally close to his ears. It made him look like he had even less of a neck than usual. “You knowing won’t help anything.”
“That’s not the point.”
The words came out snippier than I intended. I smoothed my clean palm over my jeans and kept the dirty hand clenched beside me. Getting frustrated with Russ wouldn’t make him talk. And from past experience, I knew that if I pushed him for information without giving him a solid reason to share, he’d lock down tighter than a high-security vault. Maybe I could at least convince him to share what he knew with the authorities.
“I understand that you don’t want to spread gossip. That’s not what I’m asking you to do. If Noah’s in some sort of trouble, you need to tell the police. They can’t help him otherwise. And if he did this to himself by accident, it’s not right to let the police waste resources investigating something that wasn’t a crime.”
Russ’ shoulders dropped a fraction. “They wouldn’t be able to help him even if I told them. Besides, if this turns out to have been an accident, Noah doesn’t need all of Fair Haven PD knowing his private business.”
I wasn’t sure if we were making progress or talking in circles. Russ had basically admitted that there might be someone who would want to hurt Noah, but he refused to say who, to either me or the police.
The police in their interrogations and lawyers in the courtroom often used questions that didn’t give the respondent a means of escape. Either answer implicated them. I didn’t want to be that person anymore. I didn’t want to use those tactics. But I also didn’t trust Russ to know when something needed to be shared and when it didn’t. He’d proven his willingness to prioritize discretion over common sense more than once in the past. If I didn’t push this, and someone else was hurt, either by the person who hurt Noah or by Noah himself, I’d be partly responsible for it. I’d been down that road before, and I had no intention of going back.
I shifted to face him. “I either need to be certain someone else hurt Noah or we need to talk about firing him. If this was negligence, next time someone innocent might be hurt. That’d be on us because we let loyalty to Noah blind us to the risk.”
Russ stopped the truck in the hospital parking lot and turned off the engine. “I don’t think it was negligence. Poor choices and bad judgment maybe, but not negligence.”
I crossed my arms, trying not to flinch as the hand with the dried blood touched my side. If I’d been standing, I would have planted my hands on my hips instead in an imitation of my mom’s don’t mess with me stance.
Russ reached for the door handle.
I hit the lock button on the dash below the radio. “We’re not going in until you explain.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I never would’ve held this back from your uncle.”
My Uncle Stan had been one of the best men I’d ever known. Living up to him was something I might never be able to do. It was understandable that Russ would struggle with the transition. He and Uncle Stan worked side by side for ten years before Uncle Stan passed away, and then I came in, a thirty-year-old with no knowledge of maple syrup except that I liked it on pancakes and French toast. No wonder he saw me as the junior partner even though I controlled the majority interest in the business.
Russ sucked in a big breath of air that sounded almost like a whale shooting water out its blowhole. “Noah has a little problem. An addiction.”
A little problem and addiction weren’t analogous terms in my mind, but it didn’t surprise me that Russ wanted to downplay it even now. So many questions burst into my mind that I could barely isolate one to ask.
The most logical place to start seemed to be with what type of addiction Noah had. Porn wouldn’t have ended up with him bleeding in a horse stall. It could be a substance. Fair Haven’s dark side surely had a way for people to obtain drugs, and between Beaver’s Tail Brewery and the local bars, alcohol wasn’t hard to come by. But I hadn’t seen signs of either on Noah. No smell of alcohol or marijuana. No bloodshot eyes. No trouble showing up on time and completing tasks. Until today, he’d been our most reliable employee.
Then again, at this point Russ still managed the employees the same way he had while Uncle Stan was alive. Even though I was trying to learn all aspects of the business, I’d spent most of my time over the past six weeks on paperwork and other administrative tasks.
“Do you think he was high or drunk, and that’s why he wasn’t careful around the horses?” I asked.
Russ shook his head so hard that, on a man with a narrower neck, I’d have worried about him snapping something. “Naw. Nothing like that. Noah was...is a gambler.”
