End of the Line_Maple Syrup Mysteries

by Emily James

  I’d wanted so much to believe Peter hadn’t killed his wife that I’d blinded myself to the truth. I’d promised myself I’d never do that again. But love did funny things to people. Could Mark have done this, and I was repeating my history?

  Something twitched in the back of my mind, like a mental muscle spasm. The fingerprints didn’t make sense. “It’s backwards.”

  Mark sat up slowly. The hard lines around his mouth softened slightly. “You still believe me?”

  The words of my last client, Clement, when I’d suggested his wife tried to kill him came tumbling back into my mind. You have to believe in the person you’re spending your life with.

  I rocked back. Mark hadn’t been upset because of what the police found. He’d been upset because he thought he might lose me, lose my faith in him. My belief in him mattered more than what could happen in the court. He knew what it meant for us if I didn’t trust him.

  Mark wouldn’t do something that could cost him our relationship. He’d proven that to me.

  There was only one reason he would have killed Troy. Troy would have had to be actively trying to kill me so that Mark had to kill him first to stop him. That hadn’t been the case.

  And I knew in a way I’d never known with Peter that Mark hadn’t killed Troy.

  I leaned in and kissed him. “I believe you. I know you wouldn’t have done this.”

  He leaned his head back into the chair. “Thank God.” He rubbed his hands over his face one more time, then sat up. “What did you mean by It’s backwards?”

  The change was almost jarring. As long as I still trusted him, he could believe there might be a way out of this, despite how condemning the evidence was beginning to look against him.

  And that, maybe more than anything else he’d ever said or done, made me feel like I was something special.

  “What’s backwards?” Elise echoed.

  Right. Focus, Nikki. You’ll have plenty of time to think about your relationship once it won’t be through prison bars.

  “If the cell phone belonged to Mark and he hid it and planned to keep it, but the scalpel is what he killed Troy with and he was trying to dispose of it, he would have wiped his prints off the scalpel and not the cell phone. The only reason for it to be the other way around is that they somehow stole a scalpel that already had Mark’s fingerprints on it. They couldn’t get his prints on a phone the same way.”

  Elise pulled the curtain aside and let it drop back into place. “That won’t be enough to convince the investigating officers that he didn’t do it.”

  Probably not. “They don’t have motive, either. Unless they want to argue that Mark’s a serial killer, they need motive.”

  Elise peered out the crack between the curtains now. She had to be watching for the other officers so we had warning, but didn’t want them to know so it didn’t make Mark look guiltier.

  “Grady Scherwin”—she said his name like it was a curse word—“told them about you throwing up when you saw Troy, and they started asking whether you’d ever thrown up at a crime scene before. It sounds like they think you were cheating on Mark with Troy, Mark found out, lured him to his house, and killed him.”

  “And then called it in. Do they think he’s stupid?”

  “They think he’s guilty, and they’re going to explain away anything that hints otherwise.”

  Mark pushed to his feet and stepped between Elise and me, his back to her, blocking her view of us. “I think we need to postpone the wedding,” he whispered. “This might not be resolved before then, and it’s not fair to you to marry me if I’m going to end up in prison for the next twenty-five years.”

  I couldn’t argue with his logic. My parents might well advocate for the same thing once they found out. But I didn’t want to lose Mark any more than he wanted to lose me. There wasn’t another Mark out there. “I don’t care if they put you away for life. I still want to marry you, and I’ll spend all my time filing appeal after appeal until you’re free.”

  He leaned his forehead against mine. “Thank you for believing in me.”

  “Thank you for not believing I was cheating on you with Troy.”

  “I know you better than that.”

  There was almost a smile in his voice, like he was thinking back to the conversation we’d had right before our first kiss. We’d barely begun dating and a crazy man with a vendetta against me had tried to make it look like I was cheating on Mark. He’d said those same words to me then.

  “And I know you better than to believe you’d murder someone,” I said. “We’ll figure this out together, and we’re getting married as planned.”

  Elise said something under her breath that sounded like a real curse word this time. “They’re here.”

  My heart jolted like it came loose in my chest. I’d been hoping she was wrong about the police coming for Mark. Elise did tend to be melodramatic at times. I should have known, though, that she wouldn’t have scared us like this if she wasn’t certain.

  I wrapped Mark in a hug. “I’ll call Anderson. He’ll meet you at the station. Don’t say anything to the police except that you want your lawyer.”

  He didn’t argue this time or act like I was silly to suggest he not answer any questions. He didn’t even question me calling Anderson. Anderson wasn’t going with him because I doubted myself this time. He was going with him because of the role the police thought I’d played in this.

  The doorbell rang. Elise cast one glance in our direction and headed for the front door.

  Mark held me so tightly it was almost hard to breathe.

  “I should go meet them at the door,” he said, “so Elise doesn’t have to show them in here and feel like her home’s been violated.”

  Even now, he thought of everyone else first. Elise. And me, wanting to keep me safe.

  The time for protecting me, at least, was over. “I want to investigate this and help build your defense. With Chief McTavish missing and someone intent on framing you, I don’t think we can leave it in the hands of the police.”

  Mark’s chest raised high enough that I felt the movement against my body. “I hate to say it, but you’re right.”

  The adrenaline rush I usually got when faced with the puzzle of a new case didn’t come. Instead, all my bones felt too heavy for my body to carry, like fear had infused itself down to my marrow. Of all the cases I’d been a part of, this was the one I could least afford to lose.

  Male voices carried from the front of the house alongside Elise’s. I didn’t recognize either of them. In a way, it was a small mercy. I wasn’t sure I could have handled it had they sent Grady Scherwin.

  Mark must have heard them, too, because he let me go. He pressed a gentle kiss to my lips. “Just be careful. I’d rather go to prison for the rest of my life than have anything happen to you.”

  7

  Elise and I sat side by side on her couch after the officers took Mark away and I’d called Anderson, my head on her shoulder and her cheek resting against my hair. I always used to like the smell of her green apple shampoo, but I had the uncomfortable feeling that, in years to come, whenever I smelled that scent, I’d now think of this moment. Though the memory wouldn’t be entirely bad. Yes, Mark had been arrested, but I hadn’t had to face it alone. I’d had Elise with me, and I’d been able to call Anderson for help.

  Anderson had told me to stay away from the police station for now. Given the depth of the frame-up, he wanted as few moving pieces as possible. It wouldn’t be the first time the police told a suspect a lie about their spouse or loved one to trick them into confessing. If I wasn’t there, they couldn’t use me against Mark.

  I’d told Anderson I’d start working the case while he did what he could for Mark, but so far all we’d done was sit on Elise’s couch and stare at the wall. My body felt numb.

  “I don’t understand why anyone would do this,” Elise said in a similar tone to what I imagined someone would use if they came home to find their house or car vandal
ized—a little angry and a lot like they couldn’t fathom someone destroying something valuable simply for the sake of it.

  I didn’t understand it, either. Most people liked Mark. We couldn’t possibly have a big pool to draw from for people who’d want to hurt him.

  Elise lifted her head. “You don’t think the chief…”

  I didn’t blame her for not being able to finish the thought. The timing for Chief McTavish’s disappearance was more than a little suspicious. He’d either had something to do with Troy’s death or he’d become a target as well.

  I didn’t know which to hope for. On one side, he’d have tricked us all into believing he was a good and honorable man when he wasn’t. On the other, the odds were good that he was dead.

  “How do we know he disappeared?”

  “They couldn’t reach him, and his wife said he was gone when she woke up.” Elise touched the spot where she carried her cell phone. “They pinged his cell and found it in the snow next to his car. His keys were still there too, like he’d just walked away and left it all behind.”

  I was almost afraid to ask my next question. “Where?”

  Elise dropped her head back down onto mine. “The parking lot for Lakeshore Park.”

  If Isabel and I had met there one day earlier, we might have noticed his car. That likely wouldn’t have changed the outcome, though. I didn’t know his personal vehicle well enough to recognize it, and if he’d been in a cruiser, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it sitting there. I’d have had no reason to report it, and Chief McTavish’s disappearance wouldn’t have been discovered any sooner. I couldn’t have helped spare him.

  “Mark would have driven right past on his way to the non-existent call,” Elise said quietly. “That’s also bad for Mark, isn’t it, that McTavish went missing?”

  A good prosecutor could spin that so many ways. Chief McTavish was Mark’s accomplice in the murder, and Mark killed him once Troy was dead. Chief McTavish figured out that Mark was planning to kill Troy, tried to stop him, and Mark killed him, too.

  None of the possibilities played favorably for Mark.

  I’d have to come up with an equally viable alternative for why the two things happened on the same night. “Maybe Mark and Chief McTavish worked a case together, and a family member of someone they sent to prison wanted revenge on both of them.”

  Elise’s head moved in what I could only imagine was a shake. “You’ve worked most of the murder cases since Chief McTavish came to town. They’d have targeted you, too. And Mark doesn’t usually present the condemning evidence. I could see someone wanting revenge on a police officer who put the evidence together, but Mark deals in facts—time of death and cause of death stuff.”

  “Maybe the killer originally planned to follow Mark outside of town, and Chief McTavish was driving by, and…”

  And I had no idea where I was going with that, it was so far-fetched. I was starting to sound like Mandy, throwing half-baked spaghetti-ideas at the wall.

  Elise did me the favor of letting my tangled idea die a quiet death.

  I sat up, bringing Elise with me. We couldn’t afford to skip steps or jump to conclusions. “Let’s go back to the beginning. We’re assuming this was about someone framing Mark as a way to hurt him. Could it be about someone wanting to kill Troy and cast the blame somewhere else?”

  The way we’d been sitting had loosened one side of Elise’s hair. Her sixth sense must have picked it up because she methodically released her hair and swept it back into a neat bun again, holding the bobby pins between her lips as she worked.

  She jammed the final pin in. Cousin Elise disappeared and cop Elise took her place. “If it was about Troy, why choose Mark? They weren’t even friends. There had to be easier places to kill Troy and easier people to frame for it.”

  We could ask the same if it was about Mark. Why choose Troy? Neither Mark nor I had wanted to say it to each other, but I would have been the obvious choice had someone wanted to hurt Mark.

  Elise’s bookshelf full of framed photos caught my attention. Most of them were of Arielle and Cameron growing up, but she also had shots of her and Erik, her parents, Mark and me with my dogs, Megan and Grant with their kids, and the whole Cavanaugh family gathered together at Thanksgiving.

  I wasn’t the only more obvious way to hurt Mark. The killer would have had any number of obvious choices if they wanted to hurt Mark. Sending him to prison wouldn’t hurt him as much as taking away someone he loved.

  Unless it wasn’t about hurting him.

  I turned back toward Elise. “You said Mark deals in facts. It could be that someone was trying to discredit him or prevent him from testifying in an upcoming case.”

  Her hand went to her hair like she was considering pulling the pins out and starting over again. “It wouldn’t work. The prosecution could still use his results even if he couldn’t testify, and framing him for murder wouldn’t call into question the results of his autopsies.”

  Too bad stomping my foot would have been childish. It would have helped release some steam.

  Elise raised her hands and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know how we’re going to get anywhere. We don’t have enough to go on.”

  We didn’t. We needed more information, and the obvious place to start seemed to be with whoever had called in and had Dispatch send Mark out into the middle of nowhere.

  8

  Since Elise could get fired for looking into Mark’s case further, we decided she’d go break the news about Mark’s arrest to the family while I tried to contact the dispatchers.

  Elise kept apologizing like I’d given her the easier task. I was too much of a coward to tell her that explaining everything to the Cavanaughs felt like the much more difficult, scarier job. My parents had prepared me to weasel information out of people. They’d taught me to manipulate. They hadn’t taught me how to gently break hard news.

  My time would be much better spent trying to find out who called in the fake accident.

  I didn’t want to go home to Sugarwood to make the calls, where I might run into someone who’d have questions I also wasn’t prepared to answer. Or who’d try to talk me out of what I was about to do—like Russ.

  Elise said I could stay in her house. Arielle and Cameron still had hours left in the school day.

  Thanks to my close association with most of the Fair Haven PD, I knew the names of the four regular dispatchers/desk officers. I prayed one of them was on duty the night Troy died. If someone had been out sick, it’d be harder to track down an out-of-town fill-in, and someone who wasn’t a regular might not have recognized the voice of whoever made the call.

  Unfortunately, I only knew one of the dispatcher’s phone numbers. Sheila and I took our dogs to the same obedience classes back when Velma was a puppy. In between classes, we’d met a couple times to practice together.

  I scrolled through my saved contacts and pulled up Sheila’s number. The call went to voicemail. I opted not to leave a message. Somehow Hey Sheila, were you the one on duty the night Troy died? didn’t seem like the kind of thing you should leave on a recording.

  Since she wasn’t answering, she was likely at work. I keyed in the number for the police station’s front desk.

  Sheila answered.

  “It’s Nicole,” I said.

  I wouldn’t say anything more until she responded. That would tell me how much she knew about Mark. Hopefully she was up-to-date, and I wouldn’t need to explain the situation before asking for her help.

  “How are you?” Her voice was low enough to let me know she wasn’t completely alone, but she also didn’t have anyone standing over her shoulder at the moment. “This place has gone crazy. It wasn’t even this bad after the Chief Wilson fiasco.”

  I’d gone back to Virginia to pack up my belongings after former Chief Wilson went to prison for murdering his wife and my Uncle Stan. I was too busy grieving Uncle Stan, tearing my old life apart, and being conflicted because I thought Mark
was married to consider the chaos I left behind in the police department. They’d all come under scrutiny then as well because of the corruption that Chief Wilson had been covering up. Chief McTavish had been sent to Fair Haven not only to replace him, but also to make sure the corruption ended with the removal of Chief Wilson.

  “I’m managing.” Sheila had always been skittish talking about work. She used to evade my questions when I’d asked how her day had gone when we were in obedience classes. I didn’t want to spook her by coming right to my point. Thankfully, she’d opened the door a little by saying the department was in chaos. “Were you working the night it happened?”

  “I’m on days now. I didn’t even find out about Troy until I came in this morning.”

  I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like. She’d come in thinking she knew what to expect from her day—she might deal with tragedy, but it’d be tragedy at a distance. She wouldn’t have expected to walk into it on a more personal level.

  “It’s surreal,” she said. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

  Even though it was a social nicety and she probably didn’t expect me to take her up on it, it was an opening I was going to charge into. “Could you tell me who was on that night and give me their phone number?”

  “Nikki.” The way she said my name had a plea to it.

  She wasn’t going to tell me.

  “I hope you understand,” she whispered, “but I can’t.”

  I could understand. She still had her job. That was more than could be said about nearly half the Fair Haven police force at this point. And it might not even be about her job. It might be an ethical thing for her. She might simply not feel right about sharing information with me about an active case. Lawyer or not, I was also Mark’s fiancé. Anderson was the one on record as Mark’s lawyer, not me.

  None of that rationalizing took the sting out of it, though.