A Sticky Inheritance: Maple Syrup Mysteries

by Emily James

  My stomach twisted a little. If he spent much more time around me, I wouldn’t have to worry about how attractive I found him. My ability to deceive people when I went into my lawyer mode wasn’t an admirable quality. In fact, it was one I’d hoped to leave behind if I stopped being a lawyer. I guess it was more deeply engrained in my personality than I thought.

  Russ’ shoulders sagged. “It was all my fault.”

  I put on my best how so? look. If I’d been born tall, thin, pretty, and non-klutzy, I might have been an actress.

  “I’d taken some medication that must have raised my blood pressure. Then, when I exercised, I felt like I might be having a heart attack.”

  The hesitation before the word exercised was slight, but it was the kind of tell I’d been trained to pick up on. I logged it in my mind as a point to return to when Russ finished talking.

  “I didn’t want to call 9-1-1,” he said, “and set the gossip mill running, so I called Stan. I knew he’d been a cardiologist before he came here, and I figured he’d be able to either help me or tell me if I had to call an ambulance.”

  “He called an ambulance,” Mark said, a statement, not a question. It must have been what he would have done as well.

  Russ nodded. “I couldn’t admit to what had actually caused the heart problem, so when they asked me, I remembered the bottle of Beaver’s Tail I’d had sitting in the fridge and the talk about it and I said I’d drunk a couple bottles.”

  “But it wasn’t true?” I asked, wanting to keep him talking.

  “It wasn’t.”

  His earlier bull-headedness about not wanting to even suggest a name because it could hurt the person’s reputation suddenly made sense. He didn’t want to repeat his past mistakes. I could respect that. Not repeating mistakes a second time was harder than most people made it sound.

  He didn’t volunteer any more information.

  I propped my elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Given the situation, I think you should tell me what was really going on and why you lied.”

  “Given the circumstances?” Russ turned the same shade of sickly gray that the winter sky up here seemed to look six days out of seven. “You think Jason killed Stan.”

  Crap. Way to be self-centered and insensitive. If I were flexible enough to literally kick myself under the table, I would have done it. I hadn’t made the connection before I spoke, but if Russ were innocent, the way I wanted to believe he was, he’d feel guilty for Uncle Stan’s death at Jason’s hands. His lie had started the chain of events that resulted in Jason’s murderous fury.

  Russ ground his thumb into the palm of his opposite hand. “The exercise. It involved a married lady. I couldn’t let that get out. It’d ruin her.”

  My mind was bouncing all over again. If Uncle Stan found out and threatened to expose the affair… It meant the killer might not be Jason after all. Russ’ motive would grow even stronger and the woman he was sleeping with would have a motive as well.

  Mark and I exchanged a glance. His face had a drawn, slightly panicked look, like he expected Russ to confess to murder any second. He might be the medical examiner, but he wasn’t a law enforcement officer. He didn’t actually arrest people or deal with criminals aside from testifying against the accused in court.

  And all my experience with “bad guys” had been defending them.

  Come to think of it, my expression right now might very well look as panicked as Mark’s.

  “Did Uncle Stan figure out the truth?” My voice had a strangled sound to it and was about an octave higher than it should have been.

  Russ bobbed his head. “After the police finished their testing on all the stuff they took from Jason’s place, it was obvious a single beer hadn’t caused the blip with my heart. Stan was furious. Called me a liar flat-out and demanded to know what really happened.”

  “So you killed him to protect your lover?” Mark asked.

  “Good God, no.” Russ leaned forward. “I never told him her name. She doesn’t even know he found out about it.” He must have read the continued suspicion on both our faces because he pointed at me. “The partnership papers you found. We never signed them because Stan refused to move forward with the partnership unless I stopped seeing her. He said it wasn’t right what I was doing and it’d be on his conscience if he didn’t say something. I refused. That’s the argument we had that I told you about. But we would have worked it out, and all the reasons I told you why I’d never kill Stan are still true. He was the best friend I ever had.”

  I leaned toward Mark and lowered my voice. “If Uncle Stan really didn’t know her name, then Russ wouldn’t have gained anything by killing him. All he’d have done was guarantee he’d never become part owner of Sugarwood.”

  “That’s a big if,” Mark whispered back.

  I rubbed the sides of my nose with my fingers where bands of pressure were building. It was a big if. And Russ did still have Beaver’s Tail beer in his fridge. He still drank it, which meant he had the means to kill Uncle Stan.

  “Do you regularly drink Beaver’s Tail beer?” I tried to make the question seem like I was circling back around trying to understand the situation better. I didn’t play poker, but wasn’t there some saying about not showing all your cards?

  “I never drink it,” Russ said. “I’ve heard people describe how it tastes and I don’t need the caffeine high that bad. My friend brought that one bottle over that night. We were going to drink it together, just to be able to say we’d tried it, but we…got distracted,” he finished lamely.

  I jumped to counting backward by sevens to try to block out the mental imagery that came with his confession.

  If what he said were true, then he wasn’t the one who killed Uncle Stan after all. He wouldn’t have had a couple cases lying around to use, and odds were good Jason wouldn’t have sold him any. Not unless they’d conspired together, which didn’t seem likely.

  Mark nudged my elbow and mouthed the word alibi.

  Right. I had to treat this the same way I had Jason regardless. I couldn’t assume Russ was innocent simply because I liked him. I knew better. “Where were you the night Uncle Stan died?”

  “Here, alone.” Russ did this little lift of his whole torso that I interpreted as a shrug. “I could make something up, but then you’d figure out I was lying and be convinced I was guilty.”

  He might be right. At this point I’d suspect anyone with motive who withheld something.

  “You’re not going to tell Carl about this, are you?” Russ asked.

  Mark would probably say we should tell Chief Wilson, but nothing Russ said directly connected to Uncle Stan’s death yet except that we knew why Uncle Stan accused Jason of lying about the strength of his beers. Besides, if the police department turned their attention to Russ, they wouldn’t have the manpower to properly investigate Jason, and Jason still seemed like the likelier suspect.

  “Not yet.” I scooped up the take-out containers and dumped them in the trash. “Like you said, I don’t want to cast suspicion on someone who might be innocent.”

  He met my gaze, his eyes sadder than I’d seen them even at Uncle Stan’s funeral. “If Jason killed Stan, I still won’t be innocent.”

  A deep exhaustion settled into my bones. I didn’t want Russ to be guilty. I wanted his help and experience running this business. Maybe someday we’d renew the idea of partnering in the business. I wanted the opportunity to build a friendship with the man who’d been Uncle Stan’s closest friend for so many years. But now, even if I proved him innocent, he’d likely never be the same.

  I needed to check into Jason’s alibi myself rather than waiting for Chief Wilson to get around to it. At least then neither Russ nor I would have to wonder anymore.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I noticed the missed-call message on my cell phone when I came out of the shower the next morning.

  Apparently the gas company found the source of my leak. The cause of the leak, however, was indeterminate.
That seemed like a nice way of saying we can’t tell if someone tried to blow you up or not.

  Either way, I was cleared to move back in to the house if I wanted to. I didn’t. I might be investigating a murder, but that didn’t make me one of those too-stupid-to-live sleuths who heard a strange noise in the darkened basement and went to investigate all by herself. I planned to sleep safely at The Sunburnt Arms until we knew who’d killed Uncle Stan or enough time passed that the murderer felt safe and forgot to care about me.

  Hopefully it’d be the former so that I wouldn’t have to waste a large chunk of the money Uncle Stan left me by staying long-term at a B&B.

  I dressed—thankfully I’d found a dry cleaners and been able to use Uncle Stan’s washer and dryer prior to the gas incident, so I had fresh clothes again—and climbed into my car.

  Since I wasn’t planning to move back into Uncle Stan’s house right away, I’d need to work on sorting through the rest of the house in the daytime hours.

  I was halfway there when my phone rang. I answered through the Bluetooth.

  “Is this Nicole?” a male voice asked.

  The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough that I could place it. “Yes.”

  “This is Sergeant Erik Higgins.”

  Still no bells went off in my head.

  “I responded to the gas leak at your house a couple of nights ago.”

  “Of course. Sorry about not making the connection sooner. I was a bit distracted that night.”

  “No problem.” He had a nice laugh, kind of gravelly and cozy at the same time. “I wanted to make sure someone had called you to let you know you could go home if you wanted…back to your uncle’s house I mean, not back to Virginia.”

  If I’d been in any other town, I’d have wondered how he knew I was from Virginia. Around here, though, I would have been more surprised if he didn’t know at least that much about me. “I got a call this morning, but I appreciate you checking in.”

  The spaces between houses stretched out as I reached the edge of town. Uncle Stan’s driveway was the last one before fields and forests completely took over the landscape. A sign at the road directed drivers as to which fork in the driveway to take for tours and shopping, and I’d become comfortable enough with the other branches now to know without thinking which forks also led to Uncle Stan’s house, as well as Russ’ and Noah’s places. They were the only two staff to live on site, their accommodations one of the perks that came with their positions.

  Sergeant Higgins hadn’t disconnected the call by the time I reached the driveway. “Was there something else you needed, Sergeant?”

  “Erik.” He cleared his throat. “Call me Erik.”

  Ooohhhh. I got it now. This wasn’t really an official call at all.

  “I was wondering if you might be free for drinks on Friday night,” he said.

  It was official—my dating prospects were apparently going to be better here than they had been back home. I wasn’t going to get too high on myself, though. It was more likely because I was fresh blood than because I was anything special.

  Still, I couldn’t think of any reason not to go. He’d seemed nice enough, and going out with a friendly police officer was a much better option than sitting at home and wishing Mark wasn’t married.

  I parked in the driveway of Uncle Stan’s house. “Sure. What time?”

  We arranged a few details like whether we’d meet at whatever spot we decided on or if he’d pick me up.

  “Anyplace you’d like to try?” Erik asked.

  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. Would it be duplicitous or merely efficient to suggest Hops, where I could also try to sneak some information from the bartender about the validity of Jason’s alibi? It’s not like I’d spend the whole night investigating. And it would solve the internal debate I’d been having with myself about asking Mark to go with me to Hops, which would have felt much too much like a date.

  I would have flipped a coin if I had one, but in lieu of that, I’d toss the decision into his court. “I don’t know many places, but I heard of one called Hops. Is it any good?”

  “On Fridays and Saturdays it is. They open the kitchen even in the off-season. It’s only greasy bar fare, fried onion blossoms and sliders and stuff like that, but it’s the best heart-attack-on-a-plate food around. We could go early and grab dinner, too, if you’d like.”

  Why not? Since I didn’t actually drink, I’d always preferred an actual meal to going out for drinks. My friends back home said that was too much of a commitment for a first date. What if the guy turned out to be a dud? I’d personally never understood how they could decide with only a few drinks if they wanted to see someone again or not. I liked the extra time that came with dinner, and how clear could your judgment be about a guy after a couple of drinks anyway?

  We agreed to meet at 6:00 on Friday night. In the meantime, I’d plan my approach to discreetly checking Jason’s alibi and make sure nothing else turned up in Uncle Stan’s papers to shift my search in another direction.

  The next night I picked the jeans that made my bicycler’s thighs look thinner and my favorite royal blue blouse that made my eyes extra blue. Not that Erik hadn’t already seen me with bed head wrapped in a blanket. He scored points for asking me out after seeing me look like that.

  Erik must not have been kidding when he said it was some of the best food around because I almost couldn’t find a spot when I pulled into the parking lot.

  I burst through the door to Hops at exactly 6:00. And that was not how I’d been raised. Show up early to everything because it’s disrespectful to keep people waiting was the mantra in my house growing up.

  I ground to a halt as soon as I was inside. I’d only seen Erik in the weird glow of police cruiser lights and the dim interior of the car itself. If you’d asked me to pick him out of a lineup, I probably couldn’t do it. And the bar was so full that a lineup would have given me fewer options.

  Just as my stomach was starting to turn, a man stood up from a table near the back and waved at me. The broad shoulders were a giveaway even if the wave hadn’t been. He wasn’t heavy-set by any means, but I might have called him husky. He was built like a linebacker, a wall of solid muscle, and his hair, which I was seeing for the first time, was buzzed military short. He’d picked the chair at the table that allowed him to have his back to the wall and a clear view of the rest of the room.

  I’d keep it in mind to ask him if he was former military if there was a lull in the conversation. Social rule #1 on my mother’s list: Always have a topic in mind to keep a conversation going. Maybe that’s why I was chronically uncomfortable with any silence longer than ten seconds. Yeah, that’s the story I was going with rather than that it was a flaw in my DNA.

  My preparations weren’t necessary. After the initial awkward I’m-no-longer-a-victim-you’re-interviewing-for-work moments, we settled into an easy conversation. It was different than talking to Mark, less goofiness, more deep discussion, but still nice. Very nice. Almost too nice, since the evening was nearly over before I remembered why I’d suggested Hops in the first place.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, motioning in the general direction of the restrooms, which also happened to be the direction of the bar.

  I wouldn’t have much time to come at this subtly. Then again, I was in a bar. Subtle wasn’t exactly the word of the hour.

  I waited for the crowd ordering drinks to part for a minute and I hopped up on a stool.

  The bartender stopped in front of me. “What’ll it be?”

  “Are you Kevin Franklin?”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “Yeah.”

  I held out a $20. Hopefully money talked here. “I was hoping you could help me with something. Was Jason Wood in here a week ago last Saturday night, negotiating with you to carry his beers?”

  Whatever reason he thought I had for asking, he snagged my $20. “Not on a Saturday, that’s for sure. You see this place.” He swept a
hand toward the room behind me. “You think I’d have time to argue with Jason on a night like this.”

  Busted. It still didn’t prove Jason killed Uncle Stan, but it did prove he wasn’t where he said he was the night Uncle Stan died.

  I smiled at Kevin and slid down from the stool. “Thanks.”

  I turned around and came face to chest with Erik.

  A little frown left creases between his eyes. “I came to make sure you weren’t buying your own drink. Why do you care where Jason Wood was?”

  Crap. Asking about another guy did not look good on a first date. And it’d be nice to have a second. He was a gentleman. We had a surprising amount in common. And, most importantly, he wasn’t married. At least not that I knew of. He didn’t have a wedding ring on or a mark on his ring finger where one might have been.

  I tipped my chin up toward our table. We settled in and he leaned back with his arms crossed over his chest. Not a good sign.

  “I’ve been looking into my uncle’s murder, which is why someone might have tried to blow me up the other night and why I was asking where Jason was the night my uncle died, because I think he might have been the one who killed him.” It all came out in a sonic speed information dump.

  Erik blinked slowly, but his arms loosened from his chest. “Is that why you wanted to try Hops tonight?”

  Burning started in my ears and spread across my cheeks. I dropped my gaze. “Yes.”

  “Is that the only reason you agreed to go out with me tonight?”

  I swear I was doomed to be single forever. “No. But when you asked if there was anywhere I wanted to go, this was the place that came to mind.”

  “And is there a reason you didn’t tell me?”

  I brought my gaze up. He was giving me the same granite stare I imagined he used on suspects he was questioning. I couldn’t read it. That wasn’t a feeling I was comfortable with.

  “I knew how it would look.” I pursed my lips. If I was being honest, I might as well confess to all of it. “And Chief Wilson technically told me to stop investigating.”