Maple Syrup Mysteries Box Set 1: Books 1-3

by Emily James

  The past tense grated along my ears. “He’s not gone yet. It might not have been as bad as it looked.”

  Russ’s caterpillar-like eyebrows drew together. “I didn’t mean it that way. Your uncle told me that an addict’s always an addict. The only difference is whether the addiction’s in remission like a cancer or actively killing them.”

  I’d heard him say the same thing. Uncle Stan never let people say he was an alcoholic because he saw himself as an ongoing alcoholic who’d been sober for a certain length of time. Seeing his struggle first-hand was why I didn’t drink even socially. “Was Noah in remission?”

  His jowly face drooped, reminding me once again of a sad bulldog. “I thought so until today.”

  3

  My lungs felt like they didn’t have enough space to hold the air I needed. “You think someone hurt Noah because he owed them money?”

  Russ rubbed both hands over his head, making his hair even more mad-scientist than it was before. “Noah’s been attending meetings, but it wouldn’t be the first time he slipped. And every time he does, he ends up owing more. He worked at Quantum Mechanics before coming to Sugarwood, and he got himself fired from that job for stealing to pay off some of his debts.”

  What had Uncle Stan been thinking, hiring a gambler with a history of theft? As soon as I asked myself the question, I knew the answer. Uncle Stan had been a struggling addict. His heavy drinking destroyed his heart. He’d have wanted to give Noah a second chance, too.

  “Has he slipped since he came to Sugarwood?”

  Russ visibly flinched. “Just once. The night the old sugar shack burned down, he found you ’cause he was coming home late from a poker game.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have demanded Russ tell me. How was I supposed to trust Noah now? I hit the unlock button and climbed out of the truck. “Let’s see what the doctor says about his injuries.”

  This could all have been a horrible accident. It’d still leave us back at negligence, and that prospect wasn’t much better. On days like this, I wished life came with a do-over button.

  Russ and I entered the hospital, and while he asked after Noah at the desk, I ducked into the nearest bathroom and washed Noah’s blood off my hand. I scrubbed long after all the traces of red were gone, but I could still feel it there.

  When I came out, Russ waved me over. “The nurse says they can’t tell us anything about Noah’s condition since we aren’t family, but I gave her the name of his cousin. Once Oliver gets here, I’m sure he’ll fill us in.”

  Oliver wasn’t a name I recognized, so I wasn’t counting on anything on my behalf, but Russ seemed to have a connection to nearly everyone in the town. I swear, if the man had run for mayor, he would have won.

  I slouched down in one of the hard plastic waiting room chairs, and Russ took the one next to me.

  Instead of leaning back, he perched on the edge. He swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple bob, opened his mouth, and snapped it shut again.

  I sat straight up in my seat. He looked like he wanted to say something more, and that I’d like it even less than what he’d already told me.

  I hated suspense. Once I had all the facts, I could make plans and develop strategies. I could be proactive.

  Uncertainty made me want to scale a rock cliff with my bare hands. “What is it?”

  Russ avoided making eye contact. “I think we should call Mark.”

  The muscles in my stomach spasmed like I’d done too many sit-ups. For over a month now, I hadn’t had any contact with Mark beyond a cordial nod when we saw each other at church. And every smile I had to fake when I saw him or heard him mentioned still hurt like I’d slammed my hand into a lit burner on the stove. If I was ever going to stop wishing circumstances had been different, that he wasn’t married, I couldn’t have anything to do with him. Hadn’t we just been talking about addictions? Mark was mine, and one sip could not only knock me off the wagon but drag me behind it as well.

  Russ held up his hand in a wait, wait gesture. “He’s the county medical examiner. He’s seen more intentional injuries than any doctor here, and he’ll know better than whatever ER doctor Noah gets whether someone could have done this to him or if it was accidental.”

  Part of me wanted to plant my hands over my ears and hum like a petulant child. Russ’ explanation made complete sense, and if the county medical examiner were anyone but Mark, I might have even thought to suggest it myself.

  Russ glanced to his left and then past me, as if making sure no one was within hearing distance. He leaned toward me. “Look, Nikki, whatever happened between you two, it isn’t worth staying upset over this long. I’ve lost enough people I loved to know that much at least. I’ve got to live the rest of my life with the regrets I have over your Uncle Stan and me being on the outs when he died. You and Mark…” He shook his head. “It’s been years since I’d seen him as happy as he was since you came around.”

  Ripples of guilt swirled around inside me. For hurting Mark. For not confiding in Russ. But my decision to end my friendship with Mark before it turned into an adulterous relationship had been the right one. I wasn’t going back on it.

  I could at least explain the truth to Russ and then he’d drop the matter. I hadn’t wanted to initially because I was afraid it would remind him of mistakes he’d made in the past. Perhaps I should have told him because he, of all people, would understand my decision. Both of us were trying very hard not to repeat our past mistakes.

  “Mark didn’t do anything wrong. I just—”

  Russ jumped to his feet. “There’s Oliver. I’ll be right back.”

  He waddled over to a man who’d entered the ER waiting room.

  I picked at my thumbnail, a habit my mom had always found unladylike and my dad called a sign of weakness. It figured that, when I finally got up the courage to admit why I’d broken off my seemingly innocent friendship with Mark, we’d be interrupted.

  Russ led the man back over to where I waited. I got to my feet.

  “Nicole, this is Oliver Miller, Noah’s cousin.”

  I rubbed at my eyes to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. Oliver Miller was Owl Man, the dispatcher who’d been on duty at the police station the night I hit a body in a snowstorm. He wore the same large round glasses and wide-eyed expression he had then, but instead of the uniform that I’d mistakenly thought was a police uniform at the time, he now wore the classic grease-stained powder-blue coveralls of Quantum Mechanics. He looked close to Noah in age.

  Oliver absently shook my hand. I couldn’t be sure if he recognized me or not, but I couldn’t blame him for being distracted.

  “Do we know what room Noah will be in yet?” he asked.

  “I’ll go with you to the desk to ask,” Russ said.

  Russ clapped a hand on his shoulder. It looked a little awkward with the height difference between them—Russ was closer to my height than he was to Oliver’s—but Oliver seemed to appreciate it.

  He gave Russ a weak smile. “Thanks.”

  They headed for the check-in desk, and I tucked my hands between my knees. Maybe it was all the talk of Mark, or maybe it was seeing how worried Oliver was over Noah, but I suddenly felt that hollowed-out sensation in the pit of my stomach. The only family I had in the world were my parents out in Washington, DC. One day they’d be gone, and then there’d be no one to come rushing to the hospital if anything happened to me. My best friend Ahanti was like a sister, but even she was in Virginia and soon to be married. It’s not like she’d always be able to drop everything and fly halfway across the country.

  My life was definitely not the way I’d imagined it would be by the time I was thirty.

  I gave myself a mental shake. I might not have everything I wanted, but I loved Sugarwood, and I was finally figuring out what I really wanted from life. That had to count for something.

  Russ and Oliver were gone for nearly forty-five minutes before I spotted Russ heading back in my direction.

  Once he got closer, Ru
ss waved for me to join him. “The doctor’s ready to talk to Oliver, and Oliver’s good with us coming along.”

  We met Oliver at the elevator and rode up two floors. A small headache blossomed in a line above my eyebrows as we rode, and I massaged my fingers into the space. Logically, I knew that all the terrible things that had happened in Fair Haven since I’d first arrived weren’t my fault, but on a less rational level, I couldn’t help feeling a bit like a harbinger of doom. Noah only added to the body count.

  The doctor waited outside the door of Noah’s room. I peered inside while Oliver gave his consent for the doctor to explain Noah’s condition with Russ and me present. Wires trailed off of Noah like tentacles, and a white bandage covered his head.

  The doctor rubbed his chapped red hands together like constant washing had turned it into a tic. “Noah’s head wound caused some fluid to build up around his brain. We relieved the pressure, but we can’t know yet what permanent damage might have been done or if he’ll regain consciousness.”

  I looked back into Noah’s room again. I couldn’t quite make the words sink in. He looked peaceful, like he was sleeping. The idea that he might not ever wake up didn’t seem real.

  Oliver lifted his glasses and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I need a minute,” he said.

  He moved down the hallway instead of into Noah’s room, putting plenty of space between himself and us.

  I exchanged a glance with Russ and nudged my chin forward. With Oliver out of earshot, now was a good time to ask the doctor about the nature of Noah’s injuries. If they seemed perfectly normal, then we’d have avoided upsetting Oliver more by suggesting anything otherwise. And I could rest easier that Elise wouldn’t be knocking on my door later, wanting to continue our interview.

  Russ jiggled the keys in his pocket. “Were you able to tell what caused Noah’s injuries?”

  “Injury, singular.” The doctor looked back over his shoulder at where Oliver had gone as if he wasn’t sure whether or not his permission to speak in front of us extended to sharing information he hadn’t already told the family. “He had one blow to the back of the head. The EMTs who brought him in said he was found in a horse stall, so the most probable cause is that he was kicked or knocked down and he hit his head on something.”

  If he’d been kicked, shouldn’t he have had at least two wounds, one from the initial blow and a second when his head hit the ground?

  I wasn’t a doctor—that was probably the one thing I would have been worse at than being a lawyer, since squeamish didn’t begin to describe my reaction to things being outside that belonged inside. But as a lawyer, I knew a logical fallacy when I heard one. Growing up with my parents, I could identify fallacious arguments before I could multiply. Noah’s doctor was assuming correlation proved causation. Just because Noah was found in a horse stall didn’t necessarily mean the horse had contributed to his injuries. The nature of the injuries themselves should lead to the determination of what had caused them.

  “Did the shape and size of the wound support that?” I asked. “Or could something else have caused his head wound?”

  The doctor looked down at me over the top of his glasses, the crinkles in his forehead forming three wavy horizontal lines. “There’s no need to unnecessarily complicate this by coming up with wild theories. The simplest solution is usually the right one.”

  My mother’s firm voice played in my head. As a woman, you’ll always have to fight harder to be taken seriously.

  But maybe it wasn’t a woman thing. Maybe it was a young person thing or a you’re-not-a-doctor thing. Or maybe the man simply had a sizeable ego and didn’t like to be questioned. I didn’t want to make it about gender if it wasn’t.

  Unfortunately, any of those reasons left me blockaded, and I didn’t have a good way to signal Russ to push the matter. He’d have needed more than a firm look to convince him to do anything. The man wasn’t just reluctant to rock the boat. He was afraid to even ripple the water.

  “Now,” the doctor pursed his lips, “if you’ll excuse me, I need to discuss options and outcomes with the actual family.”

  He strode down the hall to where Oliver was despite Oliver’s request for some time alone. I almost went after him to distract him longer, but the expression on Russ’ face stopped me.

  His bottom lip hung down and his furry eyebrows slanted in, forming a valley of disbelief between his eyes. “He sounds like he’s guessing about the cause of Noah’s injury.”

  I could almost hear him thinking this is why we should have called Mark. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Maybe I was being selfish and childish. It wasn’t like Mark coming to check on Noah would mean we had to renew our friendship. We could meet in a professional capacity, civil without being friendly. And if the doctor wasn’t going to actually investigate the cause of Noah’s injury, then what other choice did we have? Noah’s injuries might be accidental. In that case, we should focus on getting him better and worry about why it happened and making sure it didn’t happen again once he was healed.

  But if someone had attacked him, the police needed to know. That person might come back to finish the job once they found out Noah had survived.

  I swallowed to moisten my suddenly dry mouth. “I think it’s time to call Mark.”

  4

  I let Russ make the call so that it wouldn’t seem to come from me. Mark didn’t argue or question when Russ told him what had happened and what we wanted. Russ said he needed help, and Mark came.

  As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop the twist in my heart. His wife was a lucky woman to have a husband she could always count on to be there for her, assuming, of course, that he treated her the same way he treated all the other people in his life.

  Oliver went in to sit by Noah’s bed, and Russ and I headed down the hallway to wait by the elevators. When Mark stepped off, he nodded at me briefly, the same way he had the few times we’d run into each other since our talk about how we needed to end our friendship. It was a nod that said I don’t want to be rude by not acknowledging you exist. It was also a nod that didn’t encourage any more interaction than that.

  I tried not to let it hurt me. I had no right for it to hurt. The decision to end our friendship had been mine, not his.

  He turned toward Russ. “Do you know who Noah’s doctor is?”

  “Dr. Johnson,” Russ said. “He’s the doctor who saw him in the ER. Noah doesn’t have a regular doctor as far as I know.”

  Mark’s lips thinned. “I was hoping for Santos. We’ll have to come at it differently now.” He rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip. “I can take a look at Noah unofficially, but unless Johnson’s willing to sign off on it as suspicious, I don’t have any authority here. The best I might be able to do is ask him as a professional courtesy to run a few additional tests. Is Oliver here yet?”

  Russ nodded, and I marveled once again at the way everyone in this town seemed to know everyone else. They’d lived their lives together, and that built a sense of connectedness. As much as I fought against it, I was the wrong-colored crayon.

  “Since he’s official next of kin, it’d help if we had him on our side,” Mark said.

  Russ led the way down the hall, with Mark next to him. Even though it went against all my natural tendencies, I hung back and tried to stay on the sidelines. My parents had raised me to take charge and be noticed. Stepping aside felt about as comfortable as chewing an ice cube. But I wasn’t the one who could do the most good here.

  When we entered Noah’s room, Oliver was sitting by his side, staring.

  Something flickered across Mark’s face, like a mixed-up bowl of regret, sympathy, and sadness. It felt like all those times before where I’d suspected he had one foot in the present and the other was caught on something in the past. Now that I wasn’t his friend anymore, I’d probably never know the cause. That didn’t stop me from wanting to smooth the lines out of his forehead and tease him until he flashed his dimples.

  Mark pulled a chai
r from the other side of the room over to where Oliver sat. “Russ and Nicole asked me to come. They thought you might like someone to talk to who’d be able to give you a second opinion and make sure that every option for Noah’s recovery has been explored.”

  Oliver blinked in my direction. His blinks always seemed to take a fraction of a second longer than a normal person’s. That might be part of why he reminded me so much of an owl.

  “That was nice of them,” he said. “But the doctor said he got knocked down or kicked by those horses. Don’t know what kind of a second opinion we need on that.”

  Mark crossed an ankle over his knee. “Well, I’d like to rule out a different cause for Noah’s fall, like a stroke or a seizure. I’d have also recommended a check of his blood sugar levels if your family has a history of type 2 diabetes. We can’t tell any of that unless we run some tests, and treatment will vary depending on the cause of his fall.”

  Mark sounded so self-assured. If he hadn’t told me that he struggled with social interactions, I never would have guessed. He’d learned to hide it well. A twinge of regret twisted my heart, but not for the loss of Mark’s friendship this time.

  As hard as I’d tried, I’d never learned how to hide my nerves when speaking in a courtroom. That failing had doomed my career as a lawyer and ensured my parents would never be proud of me. I’d had to accept that when I gave up practicing law to move to Fair Haven, but it still ached sometimes, like phantom pains in an amputated limb.

  Oliver’s eyes had gone even rounder than before, a condition I wouldn’t have thought possible. He swore. “I didn’t realize so many other things could have gotten him here.”

  Mark was nodding. “And you and I both know from working with the police that we need to at least consider that someone did this to Noah.”

  Oliver cursed again, but it had a different quality this time. More like he was cursing at Mark for suggesting it. “Noah’s been working hard to turn things around. We both have. Neither of us wanted to end up like our drunk, worthless dads. There’s no one anymore who’d want to hurt him.”