A Sticky Inheritance: Maple Syrup Mysteries

by Emily James

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.

  Chapter Seven

  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 butted 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 ma
ple 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.”

  A heavy weight settled on my chest. Russ had a point. If I wasn’t subtle about this, I could leave a black spot on the reputation of someone who had nothing to do with Uncle Stan’s death. I didn’t want that.

  But maybe I could use my outsider status to my advantage. I was Stan’s grieving niece. Wouldn’t people want to tell me all their stories, the same way Russ had wanted to share the goofy story about locking themselves in the sugar shack? And since I planned to move here, I had good reason to want to know more about the ins and outs of the town.

  I couldn’t simply walk up to a stranger on the street and start quizzing them, though. I’d have to begin with the people I’d already met. Like Fay. It was time to take her up on that invitation to visit.

  Chapter Eight

  After finishing my tour of Sugarwood, I walked the twenty minutes from The Sunburnt Arms to Fay’s house, the jar of maple butter I’d selected from Sugarwood’s store as a gift tucked into my purse.

  My car still wasn’t ready, and Quantum Mechanics was closed on Sunday, so I’d be carless for at least another day. Russ had offered to chauffeur me around, but I had to try to acclimate to the northern weather sooner or later. Instead, we had plans to have supper together tomorrow night.

  I’d half expected things between us to be awkward after my attempt to pull information out of him, but the rest of my tour had been like being with an old friend. We’d swapped more stories about Uncle Stan, and I’d learned about making maple syrup candy. If my waistline could handle it, I
suspected I’d spend most of my time dealing with the store and pancake house and leave the actual production elements to Russ and the other staff.

  I checked the map I’d printed off one more time and turned down Orchard Street. The Wilsons’ house nestled at the end of a cul-de-sac with what must have been a beautiful view of the lake from a back balcony if they had one.

  I knocked on the door and Fay answered immediately. She didn’t look any healthier than when I’d seen her at the funeral. If anything, more of the color was gone from her face.

  She ushered me inside. “Carl’s at the office again today, so it’s lovely to have company. Since he insisted I quit working, it gets quite lonely at times.”

  She led me into a sunny kitchen decorated in yellows and whites. She’d laid out the table with shortbread cookies and crackers next to a jar of maple syrup butter.

  “I thought you’d like to try some of your Uncle Stan’s products,” Fay said. “Coffee or tea?”

  I gave her the jar I’d brought, which we had a good laugh over, and settled in with a cup of coffee that was substantially better than the strong-enough-to-grow-chest-hair-on-a-woman brew served at The Sunburnt Arms. If I had a firstborn child, I might have traded them away for a grande non-fat mocha latte from Starbucks. I didn’t know all of Fair Haven, but I’d yet to see a Starbucks anywhere.

  Fifteen minutes into our visit, Fay stopped mid-sentence and pressed a hand to her chest.

  I jumped to my feet, but she waved me away.

  “It’ll pass.” She leaned back in her chair and drew in a long breath. “That time it felt like butterflies were in my heart trying to break out.”

  I eased back into my chair, but stayed on the edge. “And the doctors don’t know what’s wrong?”

  Fay pushed her plate away from her, as if she’d lost interest in what was on it. “My doctor has no idea. Stan was looking through all my files and was trying to help solve the mystery. But then…” She shrugged. “I have more than one reason to miss him.”