Maple Mayhem (A Sugar Grove Mystery)

by Jessie Crockett

  I grabbed my favorite old jeans and paired them with a pullover my grandmother had knit for me when I was twelve. It was a gray fisherman’s sweater with chunky cables and ropey twists separated by swaths of seed stitch. The cuffs were starting to fray but I loved it and was only planning to hang around at home anyway. I fished around in the top drawer for some hand-knit socks to complete the cozy stay-home vibe I was feeling.

  Halfway down the hall the smell of the ham tickled its way into my nostrils and hurried my feet. I reached the dining room and started pulling plates from the buffet. Glasses, silverware, and linen napkins were the order of the day. Pizza boxes and thick china were for the kitchen table, and that was nice in its place. But Grandma only allowed one thing on her dining table besides bone china and sparkling crystal and that was a sewing machine if the table in the craft room was too small for the project.

  I had just placed the hot plates on the table when Grampa came in carrying the ham, glistening and brown, the crackling outer bits still sizzling from the heat of the oven. Celadon followed with a tea towel filled basket, slices of brownish bread peaking up through a gap in the fabric. My favorite, Grandmadama Bread. This is our family’s version of the New England favorite anadama bread, which is usually made with molasses. We, of course, use maple syrup in its place. Hot from the oven and slathered with rapidly melting butter, there was not much on earth I would rather put in my mouth.

  Hunter followed his mother with a platter of glazed parsnips and Spring brought up the rear with the butter dish. I hustled to the kitchen, sure there would be at least two or three more things that needed fetching. Scalloped potatoes wearing a cheesy browned crust on top released their fragrance on the counter. Grandma tucked a serving spoon into the dish and nodded for me to grab them. Within two minutes all available Greenes had been rounded up and Grampa was hard into saying grace.

  By the time every far-flung loved one had been brought to mind and every blessing appreciated, the temperature of the cheese on the scalloped potatoes had dropped from boiling magma to something more akin to spring rain. The community should be grateful Grampa never felt the calling to enter the ministry. Once he got rolling the only thing that stopped him was my grandmother’s gentle throat clearing, pitched slightly louder than a ticklish sound you might make at the beginning of allergy season. He’d once kept praying straight through the smoke detector because Grandma was away visiting a sick friend that day. The family joke went that Grampa would pray right through his own funeral.

  We had gotten past the grateful words and onto the appreciative actions, full plates all around, when the phone rang. We don’t answer the phone when we are at the table, so no one got up. Grampa doesn’t believe in answering machines. He says anyone who wants to speak to us badly enough will simply try again. Anyone who knows us does just that. My siblings and I have gotten around the issue by having cell phones with voice mail accounts. The phone rang again five minutes later and the caller let it ring thirty times. I counted, so I know.

  When the phone sounded again in another five minutes a twitch developed in Grampa’s eye. His hands shook as he reached for the saltshaker. He knows the saltshaker is only there for guests since everything my grandmother cooks is seasoned just the way he likes it. That’s how you could tell he was rattled, reaching for the saltshaker like that.

  When it went off a fourth time he jumped up like his knees had never felt the cold of over seventy winters and grumbled his way out of the room. I could hear him stomping in the hall like the caller might get the hint. His telephone manners were not at their best when he lifted the receiver.

  “Dani,” he hollered, “it’s for you.” I looked at my plate and at my brother, niece, and nephew tucking into the ham with such intensity there might not be enough for a second helping by the time I got back if the call took longer than a speed-dating session. I stabbed an extra piece and plopped it on my plate, hoping that no one would dare to snatch it within view of Grandma.

  I expected Grampa to glare at me when I reached the telephone table in the hall but instead he covered the mouthpiece with his gnarled paw and bent low to my ear.

  “It’s Tansey. She’s all het up about some goin’s-on up at her place.” He stretched the receiver toward me. “She said there was a problem and asked for you.” I was baffled. When it came to people in town calling up with emergencies that required a Greene to straighten them out, I was never the one they called. Not even when they needed a babysitter. Why on earth would Tansey want me?

  “Is that you, Dani?” Tansey sounded strained and a bit out of breath. I thought fleetingly of her heart.

  “Yes. How can I help you?” I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted the answer to that.

  “Somebody’s been messing around in my sugarhouse. They’ve left a threatening note. I think you ought to get on over here.”

  “Is this about the cooperative?”

  “I’d rather you see it for yourself. And hurry up, why don’t you.” She disconnected before I could protest again or even say good-bye. I hurried back to the dining room and faced the curious.

  “I’ve got to go. Tansey needs me to look at something at her sugarhouse.”

  “Is it something to do with the cooperative?” my sister asked, pausing her fork halfway to her mouth, a succulent bit of ham pronged deliciously in midair.

  “I’m afraid so. She’s asking for me to come right away. Please excuse me from the rest of dinner.” I grabbed a piece of the bread to hold me until I could get back.

  “I’ll wrap up your plate and stick it in the oven so you can heat it up later.” Grandma pushed back her chair, slid another piece of ham onto my plate, and followed me out of the room with it.

  “You’re the best, Grandma.” I pecked her on the cheek.

  “I know, dear. But it’s nice to hear it anyway.”

  * * *

  I slid into the driver’s seat of the Clunker and eased down the driveway. The sun was growing dimmer by the minute. Gray clouds scudded in from the west and made the sky look like the batting from an old quilt, dirty white, lumpy, and gaping. I turned left at the end of the drive and made my way as quickly as I thought the old car could go toward the Pringle farm. I was worried about what Tansey had to show me. She had a lot of peculiar qualities but being a worrywart wasn’t one of them.

  Tansey sat in a busted web lawn chair in front of her open barn door. A bank of clouds blotted out the sun and made me wish I’d worn a coat. In my rush I just headed out in the sweater I’d been wearing. Tansey rose as I slammed the Clunker’s door and waved her hand to motion me to follow her into the barn. Not even a greeting. For Tansey not to take the opportunity to yak my ear off meant something was definitely up.

  On a cloudy, low-light day, the gloom in the barn took some getting used to. At first I could only hear Tansey shuffling around and creaking across the wide, rough barn floorboards. Once I could see, I wished I couldn’t.

  “What do you make of that?” Tansey stuck out her sturdy arm, pointing a work-roughened finger at the far wall. Hanging from a rafter, by a noose, was a ratty old straw man that looked like a recycled Halloween decoration. One of Tansey’s floppy gardening hats with the words Pringle’s All Natural Farm embroidered onto the crown perched on the dummy’s head. Someone had pinned a note to the dummy by stabbing an awl through a piece of paper and into its plaid flannel shirt. I took a step closer.

  “If you don’t want this to be you instead, you’ll stay away from the Greene’s and the cooperative.” I read on the white lined notebook paper. It was written using black wide-tipped marker in all capital letters. The writing was messy, like someone had used their nondominant hand to print it. I felt sick. And a powerful feeling like a bad case of heartburn started bubbling up in my chest. Why was someone so opposed to the cooperative? The idea of anyone creeping into Tansey’s barn and trying to scare her made me feel dizzy with rage.

 
“I am so sorry, Tansey. I’m sure this scared you.”

  “Scared me? No. Made me angrier than a bull with a snout full of cayenne pepper is more like it. I’m so mad I could peel paint with a look.” I gave her the once-over and that did seem to be the case. The tension exuding from her was raw and fiery, not withdrawn. She looked ready to spring into action, not cower in a corner.

  “When did you find this?” I asked.

  “Just before I called you. I came out here after I was done with my chores in the other barn. I wanted to look at the supplies I might want to order with the cooperative when I saw this thing hanging from that beam. I turned toe and got on the horn to you.”

  “Did you come in here last night?”

  “Nope. I had no reason to. All the critters are in the main barn, not it here. At this time of year it isn’t a place I go more than once a day at most. In the sugaring season, sure, I’d be here all the time, but not now.”

  “So when were you here last?” I wanted to narrow down the time frame when someone could have gotten in without Tansey noticing.

  “Before I went to the meat bingo. So early Friday evening it must have been. Maybe around four thirty or five o’clock. I was checking to see if I had left the cordless phone out here ’cause I wanted to call my sister.”

  “And this wasn’t hanging here then.”

  “I would have been sure to see it if it had been.” Tansey was right. It was obvious as soon as your eyes adjusted to the low light.

  “So someone could have strung it up while you were at the opera house Friday night. Or anytime yesterday?”

  “I expect so. I doubt I was home when it happened though. The dogs would have let out a fuss if anyone had come by and I never heard nothing like that.” I wasn’t so sure. Tansey had a lot of faith in her dogs’ watchful prowess but they were getting on in years and I hadn’t noticed them being as alert as they had been in the past. I also didn’t think Tansey’s hearing was what it used to be, so even if the dogs kicked up some dust she wouldn’t necessarily notice.

  Still, the time frame was narrowed down at least a bit. Everyone in town knew Tansey wouldn’t miss meat bingo unless she was hospitalized. And Tansey hadn’t even been born in a hospital. Friday night would have been a perfect time to sneak into her barn undetected.

  “What did Knowlton say?” Knowlton, of course, never missed meat bingo so the person responsible would have expected to find the place empty. But if it had happened early maybe Knowlton himself was involved. Maybe he was playing a joke on his mother. The dogs wouldn’t have barked at him and he wouldn’t have needed to sneak onto the site. But he was too devoted to his mother to scare her like that and I would be very surprised for him to say anything bad about my family, especially considering how long he had been trying to marry into it.

  “I don’t expect he knows about this since I haven’t seen him all day. I’m not sure what he’s up to.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Knowlton. If anything he tends to you almost too well.” Part of Knowlton’s problem in the romance department was the way he prioritized his life. Topping the list was spending time with Tansey, followed closely by his abiding love of taxidermy. Stalking Celadon and me came in third. Any woman would have to be content with whatever was left over.

  “He’s been making himself scarce since he lost at bingo to that game warden.” Tansey gave me a look that said I had somehow rigged the bingo cage. “He keeps going on about how he’ll never be able to compete with that other guy’s sausage.” There was no way I could respond to that so I changed the subject.

  “I think you had better call the police and let them know about this. Probably you should try to locate Knowlton because if Mitch bothers to take this seriously, he is sure to want to question him, too.”

  “What do you mean question him? Like they would suspect him of wrongdoing?” Tansey stepped her stance wide and stuck her beefy hands on her matronly hips. I was glad I hadn’t asked her about Knowlton’s potential involvement.

  “No, of course not. I just meant as a possible witness to anything odd that might have happened here. Anything that might help to identify who did this.”

  “Mitch’s too busy singlehandedly running the police department to go worrying him about something like this.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t have anything more important to investigate than this.” Maybe if he had something else to investigate, he would stop thinking about me filching a police car.

  “There’s nothing to investigate. We both know it was Frank, up to his usual rabble-rousing and troublemaking. This time he just got even more carried away.”

  “We can’t be sure it was Frank.”

  “Who else has had one bad thing to say about the co-op? He’s the only one in the whole town who tried to discourage it; the only one who didn’t join.”

  “That doesn’t mean he was responsible for this. Frank is difficult to deal with and a big blowhard but he hasn’t ever hurt anyone as far as I know.” I didn’t want to fan her fire by telling her how frightened of Frank I had been when I went to recruit him for the co-op. Or how he had pointed a gun at Luke Collins the night before.

  “Oh it’s Frank. Of that you can be certain. He’s been a mess for years and he’s getting worse with age. The man won’t even acknowledge he knows a body when he runs into them at the post office. And I do mean runs into. He crashed right into me the other day and didn’t even grunt out an apology. Not even when he saw that he spilled my mail left, west, and crooked.”

  “If he’s gotten as bad as you say, there’s nothing we can do besides call the police.”

  “No matter what, I still know it’s Frank and there is no way that crotchety excuse for a man is going to scare me off from the cooperative.”

  “I’m relieved to hear you say that. The rumors about this are sure to whip through the town faster than head lice at an elementary school. If you drop out, others are sure to follow and then there won’t be a cooperative anymore.”

  “No straw dolly is going to keep me from saving money on my sugaring supplies. I work too hard for my earnings and any way I can legally save a bit is fine by me.” Tansey had been barely scraping by on the farm ever since forever. Knowlton’s father was never a part of the picture as far as I heard and she had to work the whole place alone. It couldn’t have been easy and was probably one of the reasons my grandparents held her in such high esteem.

  Tansey had been an older mother for a woman of her generation and Knowlton was something of a miracle baby. She was forty-five by the time he came on the scene and I expect she was pretty surprised by the whole situation. I know it caused a lot of talk in town. No one ever really figured out who Knowlton’s father was. There was a lot of speculation but Tansey never talked about it and I don’t think even my grandmother knew. I’m sure she never asked.

  “You still need to give Mitch a call. I’ll tell you what: If you get him over here to check this out, I’ll go up and speak to Frank. I don’t feel good about someone doing this to you and getting away with it.”

  “Now that’s sweet, you know it is. That’s just the sort of girl I want for a daughter-in-law. Knowlton’s right to pursue you the way he does even if you are giving him a merry chase.”

  “That’s nice of you to say, Tansey. Did you ever find that phone you were looking for? I’m not sure my cell phone will work out here.” I wanted to get back home as soon as possible. Ham is fine reheated but I was hungry now and talk about Knowlton made me queasy instead of hungry. Besides, there was nothing to be gained by discussing any sort of romantic interest Knowlton had in me. Even if the threat hadn’t driven Tansey from the cooperative, insulting Knowlton’s eligibility just might. Not to mention how much I wanted to be sure to take off before Mitch arrived.

  “It’s in my pocket. You’ll go up to Frank’s?” I nodded. “Well then, let’s get the boy wonder over here.�
�� Tansey peered closely at the grubby handset and poked at the numbers. Even from a goodly distance, in a barn that acted as a wind tunnel, Myra Phelps’s voice came through loud and clear. After telling Myra to let Mitch know she had a slice of her famous apple pie with his name on it sitting on her kitchen counter she disconnected without a good-bye.

  “He’ll be here any minute. I expect after what I hear about you stealing Lowell’s police cruiser you’d rather be gone before Mitch shows up.”

  “I’d rather head over to Frank’s than to run into Mitch. You should have seen the gleam in his eye when he saw me pulling out in Lowell’s cruiser.”

  “That boy has loved slapping people in cuffs since he was just a bitty little thing. I remember him handcuffing Knowlton to the merry-go-round when they were in elementary school. Mitch gave the thing a shove and it dragged my poor Knowlton around three or four times before a teacher put a stop to it.” Tansey shook her head slowly like she still couldn’t believe it. I remembered the incident quite clearly.

  Tansey would be distressed to realize how long it had taken for the teacher on duty to respond even after she spotted Knowlton whipping around the piece of playground equipment like a can tied on the back of a groom’s car. Knowlton had a crush on the teacher and kept leaving gifts of dead creatures in her desk drawers. Maybe she thought the spinning would knock some sense into him. Or even better, give him amnesia. In the distance I heard the wail of a police siren.

  “Okay, that’s my cue to go. I need you to stall Mitch for a bit. He’s sure to think Frank is involved and he’ll head right up there and then I’ll end up running into him anyway.”

  “I’ll do my best to keep him here. That apple pie just might hold him for a while.” Great. Not only was I going to be delayed even longer from my own lunch than I had planned, Mitch was going to be bellying up to some of Tansey’s award-winning pie. I thought about asking her for a doggy bag with a piece for me but the siren was getting louder. I jumped into the Clunker and floored it. Which meant, I was barely down the driveway and around the bend in the opposite direction when I heard Mitch and his accompanying wail too close for comfort.