Bushwhacked: Maple Syrup Mysteries Book 2

by Emily James

  I sat next to the wall across from her. I’d let her come to me.

  She crept slowly from the cage. Seeing her standing up, she was already bigger than I thought—a good forty-five pounds at least. Her white body with black spots made her look at bit like a stocky Dalmatian except for the oversized paws. The spot over her left eye circled around like a bandit’s mask.

  Once her nose touched my hand, I stroked her head and down her back. It was like the gentle touch snapped her resistance. She crawled into my lap and snuggled her head against my arm. She let out a little sigh.

  I let her stay there for a minute, but Craig would be back in to swap dogs any time now. I attached the leash to her collar and walked her back to Paul’s office.

  Purebred dogs were usually microchipped, so finding her owner, if she had one, shouldn’t be that difficult. That should leave me enough time to poke around.

  I figured out how to use the chip scanner and a number popped up. Paul had all the information for how to access the online database on a paper in the operating procedures manual, so I had a name and phone number within five minutes.

  The shelter only had a phone at the front desk and in the back, so I used my cell phone instead of leaving the office. When I called, I got voicemail and left a message. It wasn’t until I’d disconnected that I realized I’d accidentally left my cell phone number as a call back rather than the shelter number. Assuming Craig didn’t fire me at the end of the day, that shouldn’t matter.

  I printed off a kennel tag and added a yellow dot. Then I couldn’t help myself. I sat on the floor and played with her for a few minutes more before getting down to the real work—searching through Paul’s files for anything important.

  I started with the bottom drawer and worked my way up. This cabinet seemed to be invoices for things like food and cat litter, and the accompanying records from the account the shelter used for business purposes.

  Everything matched, from the amounts ordered, to amounts delivered, to how much was paid from the account. If Paul had been doing something shady that got him killed, it didn’t look like it was via the shelter’s financials. I was no forensic accountant, but given the consistency of all the withdrawals for the past six months, it didn’t look like Paul was skimming money either.

  I returned the paperwork to the drawer. The Dane puppy had fallen asleep curled into a ball by the desk. I gave her another quick ear rub on the way by. Her owners must be crazy with worry. Hopefully they got my voicemail soon and could come for her.

  The top drawer of the next filing cabinet was full of folders about missing pets. I pulled out all the files and set them on the desk to take home with me for my “pet” project with Bonnie. It was probably a good thing no one had been around when I’d thought up that corny joke or I might have been tempted to tell it and laugh a little too hard.

  The door swung open and both the puppy and I jumped.

  Craig stood in the doorway, his coat still on and a leash in his hand. If he was done, I must have been in here longer than I thought. I glanced at the clock and had to hold back a flinch. It was nearly three o’clock.

  Craig planted his hands on his hips. “What have you been doing?”

  I couldn’t tell him what I’d really been up to. Since the best lies were at least partly true, I’d go with that. I pointed at the operations manual. “Studying up. I’ve figured out how to enter animals into the system and also how to order supplies.”

  Some of the got ya drained from his stance. The disappointed look on his face made me suspect he was looking for an excuse to get rid of me, and he’d probably thought he’d caught me wasting time.

  I snagged the puppy’s new tag off the desk. “I’ll take her outside and then put her away. Did you need me to work on something else?”

  Craig shook his head. “Clock out early today. I’ll handle the evening feeding. I’ve got a couple euthanasias today on dogs who are too aggressive to adopt out, and I’m guessing you don’t want to be here for that.”

  I shuddered. Definitely not. “I’ll call for my ride as soon as I get this girl settled.”

  I took care of the puppy quickly, called Russ, and grabbed my coat and purse.

  I had the front door open when I remembered that the lost pets’ files I needed were still sitting on Paul’s desk. I let the door fall closed and turned back.

  The hallway down to Paul’s office was angled in such a way that I could catch glimpses of Craig in the kennel. My cringe reflex wanted me to close my eyes, but it wasn’t like I’d see anything. All he was doing at the moment was grabbing a muzzle from where they hung on the wall and moving toward the dog who’d nearly attacked me earlier today.

  I wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting his dot color tomorrow, though that hadn’t really been an issue. An ache grew in my chest, and I ducked into Paul’s office. I needed to get out of here fast. It hurt too much to know what was about to happen.

  I grabbed up the files. A heavy thunk-clank carried from the kennel to the office.

  That was odd. The only thing back there that could make that distinctive dull thunk-clank was the back door. It didn’t have a bell like the front door, probably because workers were always going in and out, walking the dogs.

  What the heck was Craig doing? Surely he didn’t euthanize dogs outside. Wouldn’t he do it right in their kennels to minimize the risk?

  I set the file folders back down, hurried through the kennel area, and eased the back door open a crack.

  Craig stood at the edge of the empty back lot, where it butted up to the back parking lot. The dog who’d tried to attack me stood muzzled, held at a distance from him by a long dog-catcher’s pole with a loop on the end.

  He flicked his wrist like he was checking his watch and tapped his foot a couple of times. Who would he be waiting for with one of the dogs he’d supposedly been planning to euthanize?

  A navy blue van with splatters of mud and rust along the bottom edges rolled to a stop in front of him. The man who climbed out had long hair pulled back in a ponytail, an angular nose, and a beanie on his head. He looked more like an artist than a meet-in-a-dark-alley type.

  I leaned in to see if I could read the license plate. Telling Erik that I saw an old blue van wasn’t going to narrow his suspect pool down much if this was related.

  My coat snagged on a rough piece of metal at the edge of the door. I wiggled the fabric, but it held fast. I bit back a curse. I was stuck.

  I peeked out the crack again. I couldn’t see the dog anymore. Craig would be back here any second, and considering how much he already disliked me, it was a pretty sure bet that he wasn’t going to believe any excuse I could come up with in the next five seconds for how I got caught on the back door frame.

  My heart fluttered with the erratic moth-caught-in-a-glass-jar feeling. I gave a hard tug, and the fabric ripped. I crab-scrambled backward, but it was too late.

  The door opened, and Craig loomed over me.

  Chapter Ten

  Craig yanked the door shut behind him and cursed. “What are you still doing here?”

  He must have thought I was gone because I’d opened the front door. He would have heard the chime. Since I hadn’t actually gone out, though, there hadn’t been an accompanying chime to warn him of my return.

  My mind blanked, and all I could find there was the truth. “I forgot the lost pet files, and I had to come back for them.”

  He swore again with a bit more force. “And you decided to snoop where you don’t belong.”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact.

  My heart had crawled up into my throat now and lodged there. If he’d been the one to kill Paul, I’d be next. Hopefully pentobarbital was quick and painless the way everyone claimed.

  I had to play the cards I had like they were the ones I wanted and hope my bluff would be enough. I opened my mouth to tell him that I was an undercover police officer sent here to investigate Paul’s death, and that he didn’t want t
o do anything stupid because I’d already called for back-up.

  Instead I snapped my mouth back shut. His face had a panicked flush to it rather than an angry flush—white under the red rather than pure crimson.

  I climbed to my feet. If he was scared, then I should advance. “What were you doing out there? I saw you take the dog you said you had to euthanize.”

  Craig’s stretched out a hand toward me in a give-me-a-chance-to-explain gesture. “What I’m doing,” he pointed back at the door, “is a good thing.”

  He inched toward me. My skin crawled, begging me to step back. His demeanor was such a switch from the egomaniacal Craig of earlier that a little voice whispered in the back of my mind that it could be a trick. He wanted to bring down my defenses so he could overpower me more easily.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Paul was small-minded and couldn’t see past his prejudices.” He practically spit the words out. This hatred of Paul felt like the most genuine thing he’d said since we met. “He couldn’t see the potential in certain breeds of dogs.”

  “Keep talking.” I did take a step back this time. If he decided to grab for me, I wanted enough warning to block and knee him in the groin. “I don’t see how that explains why you’re sneaking a dog out of the shelter and lying about it. I imagine that’d get you fired.”

  Fear flickered across his eyes, fast and gone. “Many of those dogs could live a full life with time and retraining. Paul disagreed, so I started faking the paperwork and finding them new homes.”

  I glanced sideways at the kennel where I’d returned the Great Dane puppy. Her first reaction to me was so different from how she’d been afterward. Very few dogs were born aggressive. Most became that way through mistreatment. They deserved a second chance.

  When I’d been poking around investigating my Uncle Stan’s death, Russ warned me I needed to be careful because I could accidentally end up hurting the reputation of good people who hadn’t done anything wrong. The way Craig went about saving the dogs was technically wrong, but his reasons were good, which added an additional layer to it. Was wrong always wrong, or did the motive behind it sometimes make it right?

  I took another step backward. Everything he’d told me also gave him motive for murdering Paul, more so if Paul found out and threatened to fire him.

  “Please, Nicole.” The words seemed to rip from Craig like this was his first time having to beg for anything. “Don’t tell anyone. I can’t lose this job.”

  I didn’t need to tell Erik about this immediately. I could take the time to hunt for corroborating evidence. If Craig had killed Paul, he’d done it for a specific reason, and he wouldn’t be out hunting other victims. Plus, if Craig was telling the truth about Paul, it would hurt Erik to hear that his friend wasn’t the man he thought he was.

  But just in case Craig was the killer, I wanted him to believe I was on his side and would keep his secret. “I won’t tell anyone.” I mentally added for now. “I think it’s a good thing what you’re doing.”

  And hopefully I was right that the killer wouldn’t strike again in the meantime.

  Chapter Eleven

  As I trekked from my house to the snowshoe and ski rental shop the next morning, I wasn’t sure whether I hurt more or less than I had the day before. My legs felt a bit better, but I had a residual headache from bonking my skull on the shelves and a bruise the size of a small dog on my backside from falling on my tush repeatedly that hurt whenever I sat down and whenever I walked. So basically the only time I didn’t hurt was when I was standing perfectly still, which was when my headache raged the worst.

  I’d tucked a bottle of ibuprofen into the coat of Uncle Stan’s that I’d selected for today to replace the coat I’d torn the day before. This one was his church coat, a gray wool that reached to my knees. If it ever got wet, it might crush me.

  I shook the snow off my hair and hung the coat on the rack by the door. It might have been my imagination, but I think even the coat rack groaned under the weight of it.

  The employee behind the counter didn’t even glance up. His gaze was glued to the newspaper spread out in front of him. His mouth hung open.

  “Did you see this?” he said. He waved me over, still without actually making eye contact.

  I stopped on the opposite side of the counter. The paper was this morning’s edition of Fair Haven’s weekly newspaper. A smiling picture of Paul stared back at me from above the fold.

  The employee slowly shook his head. “I can’t believe it. I saw him just the day before. He came in and rented a pair of snowshoes.” He glanced up and did a double-take. “You’re not Russ.”

  Now that I had a clearer view of him, he looked to be in his mid-twenties, with the build of a lean athlete, maybe a runner, given his lanky proportions.

  He slid off the stool he’d been perched on. “Are you here to rent something?”

  “I’m Nicole. Stan was my uncle. Russ said you’d be teaching me about the shop today.”

  “Right. I’m Dave.” He brushed off his hands on his jeans even though he hadn’t been doing anything that would make them dirty and moved around to the front of the desk. His movements reminded me a bit of a praying mantis, his arms swinging with his movements. “Sorry about that. I just wasn’t expecting someone so…” His mouth opened and closed.

  After being judged as inept and stupid recently, maybe I didn’t want to know what he’d expected and how I didn’t fit it. But I’d rather know than assume incorrectly. If I’d been able to quirk an eyebrow at him, I would have done it. “So…?”

  He swallowed hard. “Pretty.”

  “Oh.” Heat filled my face. That was about as far as it could get from what I’d expected. “Well, thank you.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other until I could almost hear my mother tell me to stop squirming. “So how do things work around here?”

  That seemed to snap him out of his awkward gawking. He walked me through the process of fitting people for snowshoes or skies, including making me take off my boots so he could demonstrate what a too big or too small fit felt like.

  He put the final sample ski boot back on the shelf and shuffled a foot back and forth. “That’s really about it until you can practice on a real person. I mean, there’s repairing and stuff, but that takes years to learn.”

  I looked around the currently empty shop. “So what do you do when no one’s here?”

  “I clean the gear mostly.” He shrugged and then his face lit up. “When I run out of stuff to do, though, I work on my novel.”

  Before I had a chance to answer, he strode back to the counter and pulled a notebook and pen out from beneath. “I’ve been plotting out an espionage novel, kind of like James Bond but with a CIA agent as the main character, but now”—he tapped his pen on the newspaper next to the image of Paul’s face—”I’m thinking maybe I should write a mystery instead. You got to draw inspiration from real life if you want to write a great book.”

  I pulled a stool around to the opposite side of the counter so that I didn’t have to sit next to him. After the pretty comment and how much time he’d spent touching my feet, this association was already awkward enough. And I was technically his boss. “Did you know Paul well?”

  I guessed not from his lack of grief, but it was worth a shot.

  He shook his head absently, already flipping through the pages of his notebook. “No more than I know any of our regulars, unless you count his shoe size.” He clicked the end of the pen against his lower lip. “Unless I want to make this a sci-fi instead, alien abduction and experimentation probably won’t work for how he died and who killed him.”

  Since it didn’t seem like a customer was going to come in any time soon, maybe I should roll with it. Fair Haven was a small town with an active gossip mill, after all. Who knew what useful information Dave might have holed up in his brain.

  I propped my elbows up on the counter. “You said writers should draw inspiration from real life, so what do you think
was the most likely motive for Paul’s death?”

  Dave had the pen cap between his teeth now. “He seemed like a nice guy the times I talked to him, and he wasn’t married, so it couldn’t have been jealousy or anything like that.” His face lit up. “My sister works at the bank, though, and when she saw the paper this morning, she said she bet it had something to do with the large bank drafts he drew every month.”

  I’d bet that was the type of information his sister wasn’t supposed to share with anyone. Every bank I’d ever used had a confidentiality policy. It wasn’t something I could look in to on my own either, but Erik could. I’d never used a bank draft myself, but they probably had to be made out to someone and that meant the bank would have a record. “Did she say how much the bank drafts were for or who they were made out to?”

  Dave was hunched over his notebook, scribbling madly. “Yeah, that’s good. It had to be the person he was giving the money too. Maybe he had gambling debts. Or he was being blackmailed.”

  Apparently I’d lost him to his story. He wasn’t really listening to me anymore. I wandered into the break room and made a pot of coffee. By the time it was ready, customers had started to filter in.

  By noon, I’d learned everything I was going to about this part of the business. If I cut out early, I could call Erik and recommend that they look into Paul’s financials if they hadn’t already. I’d keep quiet on what I’d found out about Craig for now. If it turned out that Paul had some other situation going on that led to his death, there wasn’t any need to drag Craig into the investigation, even if it would be nice to see his cockiness brought down a notch.

  I told Dave I was taking off and thanked him for helping me, then shrugged back into Uncle Stan’s ten-ton coat and headed for the door.