A Sticky Inheritance: Maple Syrup Mysteries

by Emily James

  I stopped. Time for a different tactic. “I can see why you’d be angry. You’ve given her everything she should want, right? A nice house. Security.”

  Chief Wilson laughed, and it sounded a bit like a lawnmower struggling to start. “That’s not going to work on me, Ms. Fitzhenry-Dawes.” He slurred my last name again. “I know the tricks of the trade.”

  No more subterfuge then. I wished I could cross my arms to give the impression of calm and strength, but my injured shoulder ached from the CPR I’d done on Fay. I wasn’t sure I could lift it even that far. “So what do you plan to do with me? People will wonder where I went.”

  “I doubt it. Haven’t you been telling the whole town goodbye? It’ll look like you headed home. And if you don’t make it, your family will assume something happened to you along the way.”

  Arg. He was probably right.

  Which meant I had no reason to go into that garage. I had no reason to do anything he said.

  If he wanted to kill me, I was going to make him do it the hard way. The hard, loud, attention-drawing, guilty-finger pointing way.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The lessons from my self-defense classes flooded into my brain in a jumbled mess. Panic scrabbled at my throat, making it hard to breathe. I was only supposed to have to defend myself and draw enough attention to attract help. Attacking first was never part of the training.

  But some things still applied. Chief Wilson was stronger and better trained. My only hope was to aim for a vulnerable spot and scratch like crazy to get his DNA under my fingernails. I might not survive this, but I was going to leave as much evidence for the police and prosecutor as possible.

  The most vulnerable spot on a man was his groin, and if any man deserved an elbow in the nuts, it was him.

  I let out a screech that I hoped would both throw him off and draw the attention of every neighbor on the block, ducked low, and launched myself toward his lower half.

  I missed my target and smashed good shoulder first into his stomach instead.

  The gun boomed somewhere above my head, and we hurtled backward. One of his limbs clipped me in the chin, sending hot darts through my face, and the warm copper tang of blood flooded my mouth. Black twirled across my vision.

  We tumbled into the side of the recliner. It tipped and crashed backward.

  As I went down, I caught a glimpse of the front door. It didn’t seem as far away as it had before. If he’d lost his grip on the gun in the fall, I might be able to make it. I scrambled forward on hands and knees.

  A hand clamped around my ankle and yanked me back. I flopped onto my belly like a land-bound fish. For a second, all I could think was that this was not a very graceful way to die, which, sadly enough, was fitting, since I’d never been very graceful in life.

  Chief Wilson planted a knee into the small of my back and wrapped a large hand around the side of my head. He crushed my face into the cold wood floor.

  “You can’t ever do what you’re told, can you?” His words came out in a snarl.

  “Not when what I’m being told is wrong.” It was difficult to speak with my face all flattened, but the extra hard squeeze he gave my head gave away that he’d understood me.

  “I didn’t want to have to hurt you.”

  The front door slammed back against the wall. “Let her go.”

  Russ!

  Even though Chief Wilson kept me firmly trapped, I recognized Russ’ voice. When I disconnected our call, he must have jumped into his truck and driven straight here.

  Chief Wilson’s weight on my back shifted slightly. “Go home, Russ. If you don’t, I’ll snap her neck and blame it on you. It’ll be your word against mine, and who do you think people will believe?”

  “I always knew you had an ego bigger than your heart,” Russ said. “I’m not leaving her here with you.”

  I had to assume Chief Wilson had lost his gun in our tussle. Otherwise he would have threatened to shoot me or to shoot Russ. If Russ could grab it, we might still make it out of here. “He dropped his gun—”

  The crushing weight vanished from my back. I rolled to the side in time to see Chief Wilson dive for the gun and Russ dive for Chief Wilson. They went down in a tangle of limbs.

  Russ might be strong from the physical labor involved with working the maple bush, but no way was he going to be a match for a police officer in hand-to-hand combat.

  I fished for my phone, but stopped before I reached it. Calling for help wouldn’t be fast enough. He could shoot us both before the 9-1-1 dispatcher even answered and blame it on Russ.

  I stumbled to my feet and grabbed a lamp from the end table. The shade toppled off, and a light tug signaled the cord popping from the wall. I sprinted toward the fight.

  I’d always been terrible at sports, baseball included, but Chief Wilson’s head made a much bigger target than a baseball. Even I couldn’t miss it.

  I swung the lamp and the base cracked him in the skull, above his ear.

  He dropped to his knees. Russ wrenched the gun from his grip and turned it on Chief Wilson.

  I skittered around the couch to stand beside Russ. Wilson rubbed the back of his head, a dazed look on his face.

  “I know I’m not your uncle and you’re a grown woman,” Russ said, “but I’m not asking this time. I’m telling you. Call the police.”

  I set down the lamp and did as I was told.

  For what seemed like hours, the police questioned Russ and me separately, then sent in an EMT to check me over and put my arm back in a sling.

  I couldn’t tell exactly how long it took or what time it was because my watch had broken during the fight, they took my cell phone, and apparently no one thought a clock was necessary in the room they tucked me in to. This must be some form of psychological trick to put pressure on suspects.

  Sometime after I started pacing the floor, a balding officer brought Russ in.

  The officer nodded at me. “Shouldn’t be long now, miss.”

  Russ sank heavily into the nearest chair. It creaked under his weight.

  I dragged another chair over beside him. “Do you think this means they’ve decided we’re telling the truth?”

  “I guess so.” He glanced at the door. “I passed the county sheriff and two of his deputies on the way here. They wouldn’t have brought in someone from the outside if they weren’t taking this seriously and considering charging Carl.”

  His voice had a hollow edge to it, and his shoulders slumped forward. I would have wondered why he didn’t look happier over being proven innocent if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew how he felt about Fay.

  “Would they tell you anything about Fay?”

  I knew he must have asked. I’d asked both the officers who questioned me. They either didn’t know anything or wouldn’t tell me. They hadn’t given me a reason for their refusal. I’d briefly considered requesting that they let me see Erik, but I didn’t want to put him in a bad position.

  “Quincey,”—Russ waved his hand toward the door, and I guessed he meant the officer who brought him to my room—“said it didn’t look good. They’ve had to put her on life support, and they’re running scans to see if there’s any brain activity.”

  An ache built in my stomach. It’d been one thing to know she might die because of a problem with her heart that was outside of anyone’s control, but it was something else completely to think about her hooked up to machines and dying because the man who should have loved and protected her hurt her instead.

  “She was with me because she was lonely.” Russ rocked back and forth in his chair, back and forth. “I was with her because I loved her. I should have listened to Stan when he told me to break it off. He told me sleeping with a married woman would bring trouble and pain. But she didn’t want to give Carl up, and I didn’t want to lose her. Even though I knew Stan was right and what I was doing was wrong.”

  Any response I could come up with felt callous. Callous, and then there was that old saying about peo
ple in glass houses. If I hadn’t wanted to keep my ex so badly, I would have noticed the signs that said he was married. But I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to face the truth. And then I couldn’t see it.

  It seemed to be a pattern with me, one that I wasn’t proud of. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you when you said you’d never hurt Uncle Stan. Maybe if I had—”

  He clamped his hand over mine. “This isn’t your fault. Don’t even go there.”

  He was right, but it didn’t feel that way. I’d assumed he was lying because I’d been lied to before. And it turned out blind disbelief wasn’t any better a way to live than blind belief had been. Maybe the best path was somewhere in the middle, where trust and cynicism met up to form common sense.

  “I’m sorry anyway.” I patted the top of our joined hands. “Thank you for coming to my rescue.”

  He smiled even though it had a sad edge to it. “I was doing what your uncle would’ve done if he were still here.”

  We sat for a few minutes in silence, sharing the grief that we couldn’t share in words. Words couldn’t bring back the people we’d lost, but I could put one thing right. “I was thinking that owning Sugarwood might be too much for me.”

  Russ’ gaze snapped to my face, and he frowned. “You’re not planning on selling the place? So many people depend on—”

  I held my palm out toward him in the universal sign for wait. “That it might be too much for me on my own. I was thinking of taking on a partner, and I was hoping you might be interested in the job.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I stayed over in Fair Haven for Fay’s funeral. I hadn’t known her long, but I’d counted her a friend, and I wanted a chance to say a final goodbye.

  As the funeral broke up, Mark approached me, his shoulders hunched against the wind.

  He scrubbed a hand over his hair and looked past my face rather than meeting my gaze. “Russ said you were planning to leave right after the funeral, but do you have time for a quick walk with me first?”

  It was late enough in the day that I’d have to find a hotel somewhere halfway anyway, so a few more minutes wouldn’t matter. I motioned toward the sugar maple bush butting up against the cemetery. “Let’s get out of the wind at least.”

  A wide path marked by poles at five-foot intervals blocked a path out from the bush around it, cultivation in the midst of the wild. The path allowed us to walk side by side.

  “I owe you an apology,” Mark said.

  I rubbed my hands up my arms, trying to generate some extra warmth. “For what?”

  “I didn’t take your call the day Fay died. I feel like—”

  I waved my hand as if I could brush his apology away. “It wouldn’t have made a difference. It wasn’t until I was talking to Russ that I put things together. You couldn’t have known Carl Wilson would be in the house when I showed up. And besides, I hadn’t answered your calls for days either.”

  “Still.”

  The silence settled over us, broken only by the trees’ bare branches clattering together overhead and the crunch of decaying leaves underfoot.

  “Will this go to trial?” I asked.

  I had plenty of experience sitting in courtrooms, both observing and serving as junior counsel, but I’d never had to go as a witness. If Wilson—I couldn’t call him Chief anymore—decided to take his chances, I couldn’t see any way I’d be exempt from testifying.

  Mark shook his head. “He took a plea deal. He knew he’d never survive in the general population as a former police chief. In exchange for solitary, he admitted to everything.”

  I drew my first deep breath in what felt like a solid week. The near-winter air bit my lungs, but it also made me feel sharp and vibrant. I wanted to breathe it in this time rather than hiding from it the way I had when I first came to Fair Haven. Maybe I’d make a Michigan girl after all.

  “He told me why he did it.” I stopped, pulled off a mitt, and ran my fingers along the ropy ridges of the nearest sugar maple tree. My sugar maple tree. In a few months, Russ and the others would be collecting sap from them, and I’d be learning a new skill. “What I’m still curious about is how? You can tell me that right, since it’ll be public record?”

  Mark stepped in close, looking down at me. His gaze dipped to my lips and my breath caught.

  He pulled a leaf fragment from my hair and stepped back. “Apparently he knew about Fay’s affair for a while, and he was waiting until he could find a good way to murder her without getting caught.”

  “And when Uncle Stan made a fuss about the caffeine content in Beaver’s Tail beer and how dangerous it could be to a healthy heart…” I was guessing, but it sounded reasonable.

  “Mmhmm,” Mark said. “He used the investigation into Jason Wood and Beaver’s Tail Brewery to get what he needed. He took an extra canister of the caffeine powder Jason uses in his beer, but never entered it into evidence, so there’d be no record of him buying caffeine powder. Then he bought his own six-packs of the beer itself in the name of testing it for the investigation. What he was actually trying to figure out was how high a dosage he needed to use in order to either cause or mimic heart problems. He didn’t want to leave an online trail by searching for the information that way.”

  The rest of how it happened all lined up like dominoes. Fay got sick, and her doctors couldn’t understand why her seemingly healthy heart was showings symptoms of distress. When Fay learned about Uncle Stan’s past career and he offered to help, Uncle Stan became a threat to Wilson’s plan.

  “Did he say how…” My throat closed and it took me a minute to take control again. “My Uncle Stan. How did it happen?”

  Mark’s hand reached toward me like he wanted to offer comfort, then dropped back to his side. We were in such an awkward no man’s land. He was married, and aside from the relationship I was beginning to explore with Erik, I refused to be the other woman. Hopefully, though, Mark and I could find a way to be friends without all the awkwardness.

  The wind blew his hair over his forehead, and he brushed it back. “Stan told Fay about his own heart, so Carl knew. He showed up at Stan’s house unexpectedly and forced him to overdose. The way Carl tells it, he said it was either that or he’d kill Russ as well.”

  It made sense. Uncle Stan wouldn’t have been any more likely than I would to go easily and do what he was told. If he was going to die, he would have wanted to make it clear he was murdered. Carl Wilson pressed the only button that would have made Uncle Stan comply—he’d threatened to hurt someone my uncle cared about.

  “What was his endgame with Fay?” I asked.

  “Once he’d used the high doses of caffeine for long enough to establish a pre-existing heart condition, he planned to poison her with antifreeze. You found her when she’d finally taken in a lethal amount.”

  I’d heard of dogs and cats and raccoons dying from drinking antifreeze, something about it tasting sweet. It seemed like an ignoble way for such a lovely woman to die. “How did he get her to drink it without her knowing?”

  “The techs found it in a few different items in their fridge. Carl would have known which ones to avoid, and Fay would have slowly been killing herself.”

  “But wouldn’t the doctors have known? Surely antifreeze poisoning couldn’t have been considered accidental.”

  “He wasn’t aiming for accidental. Her death would have been ruled a heart attack. Her body would have metabolized the antifreeze, so unless we had a reason after her death to check for high amounts of calcium oxalate crystals in her tissues, a byproduct of the metabolism of antifreeze, no one would have suspected she was poisoned. Deaths from antifreeze poisoning often present as undetermined, and so the doctors will logically default to listing cause of death based on a prior health issue if there’s one on record.”

  Since Fay’s heart problems were well known by now, that would have been the official cause listed, and no one would have looked for anything further.

  I marched off at a pace that mig
ht have been a little too brisk. Wilson’s plan was premeditated murder at its height. He’d thought it through carefully, and he’d watched his wife slowly die. The unmerciful part of me wished he hadn’t made a plea and had found himself in the general population, where cops had a short life expectancy. Apparently mercy wasn’t one of my strengths, either.

  Fay might have broken her marriage vows, but she didn’t deserve to die.

  Mark grabbed my arm and drew me to a halt. I could feel the warmth of his hand through my jacket. My heart tugged in two directions, one warmed by Mark’s touch and the other by the care shown by Erik’s scarf and mittens.

  “You did a good thing,” Mark said. “If you hadn’t come here, insisting someone killed your uncle, Carl would have gotten away with it all. I hope you’ll reconsider staying.”

  I slipped out of his grip, continuing on the path back to my car a little more slowly now. I couldn’t bring Fay or Uncle Stan back, but Wilson wouldn’t hurt anyone else, and Russ wouldn’t be going to prison for something he didn’t do.

  Maybe I couldn’t make the world just or fair, but I didn’t have to spend my life working to put the guilty back out into the world in the name of due process, either. It was time to figure out what I wanted from my life and how I could make a positive difference.

  “I have to go back.”

  Mark’s expression fell.

  “But only to pack up my belongings and sub-let my apartment,” I said. “I’ll hopefully be back here before Christmas. If my first couple of weeks in Fair Haven are any indication, I certainly won’t be bored living here.”

  “Just wait,” Mark said with a grin. “It isn’t even tourist season yet.”

  Bonus Recipe: Maple-Glazed Pork ala Russ

  INGREDIENTS:

  2 1/2 pounds boneless pork loin roast

  1 cup real maple syrup