Maple Syrup Mysteries Box Set 2: Books 4-6 Page 3

  I settled back in my seat and stuck my fingers through the protective grate that turned Mark’s backseat into a giant doggy crate. Velma pressed her nose to my hand. “She’s always jealous when she’s not the center of attention.”

  Having two dogs helped me better understand what having two children would be like. They played together, napped together, and sometimes even happily shared their toys, but when it came to having my attention, they both wanted it all for themselves.

  I leaned my head back onto the headrest. Suddenly, all I wanted was to get home and be with my dogs. Now that I wasn’t out in the woods, managing missing children or dead bodies, and I wasn’t being questioned by a police chief who disliked how connected I was to his department, all my energy seemed to leak out of my pores and evaporate in the warmth from the truck heater.

  Mark pulled out onto the road and headed for Sugarwood. He looked at me sidelong. “Bad day. Should I stop for food?”

  I nodded. As much as I wanted to become a better cook, I didn’t enjoy cooking, and on days like today, preparing dinner was akin to torture. Now baking, that was different. That was worth it because I ended up with something sweet at the end. “Do you know if they found Holly Northgate?”

  “Not yet. The chief issued a BOLO—be on the lookout. She’s either turned off her phone or destroyed it, because they’re not able to locate it.”

  That confirmed what I’d suspected. They assumed Holly had killed Drew. Based on the gloves and how isolated we were in the bush, the case looked simple enough, especially since I couldn’t think of a reason why an innocent person would also make sure they couldn’t be tracked through their phone.

  Except that I’d been around Drew and Holly for days. They’d been a bit immature—more Holly than Drew—but otherwise, they’d seemed happy together. Nothing I’d seen suggested she’d want to hurt Drew. If she’d done it, it must have been in a fit of passion. Perhaps she hadn’t even meant to kill him.

  Mark parallel parked in a spot in front of A Salt & Battery. I didn’t even have to tell him what to order anymore. He knew they had my favorite fish and chips, better even than any I’d had in DC. After a rough day like today, my desire to eat healthy was always going to be trumped by the part of my brain that wanted comfort food.

  I closed my eyes. The truck door opening again and two takeout containers landing in my lap told me Mark had returned.

  The extra warmth helped chase off any vestiges of a chill. It didn’t help chase away the malaise I felt inside. “I’m starting to feel a bit like an angel of death. Murders have gone up something like three hundred percent since I got here.”

  A hand squeezed mine. “It’s not you. Chief McTavish has me looking over some old cases from before I moved back to Fair Haven. He suspects that former Chief Wilson failed to properly investigate more than one case, labeling it an accident or a suicide when it might not have been.”

  That probably shouldn’t have made me feel better, but it did. At least I hadn’t cursed the town.

  I opened my eyes and planted a kiss on the back of Mark’s hand. Uncle Stan’s death had been one of the worst things that could have happened to me, and paradoxically also one of the best. It brought me here, where I’d been happier than I could remember.

  He gave my hand another squeeze and then returned both hands to the wheel. “I’ll be by to pick you up tomorrow at 11:30.”

  I barely stopped myself from bonking my head back against the headrest. With everything that had happened today, I’d forgotten all about the welcome-home lunch for Mark’s parents. It’d be my first time meeting them.

  My first time meeting any parents of a boyfriend. My previous boyfriend had been my only serious boyfriend, and he’d never introduced me to his parents. The omission made sense in hindsight since I found out, after his wife died, that he’d been married the whole time we were dating. You didn’t exactly introduce your mistress to your parents.

  I picked at the edge of the takeout container. Mark would believe me if I claimed I wasn’t up to it because of what happened today. But I’d be lying to him, and I’d have to meet his parents sometime. At least, I’d have to meet them sometime assuming we were going to have a future together. Even though we’d been dating for over a month, he hadn’t said I love you yet. Neither had I. Not because I didn’t feel it, but because I was such a big chicken it was surprising I didn’t cluck when I laughed.

  I wanted a future with him, and not one built on lies. “I’ll be ready.”

  “Are you still able to bring a dessert? I know today didn’t go the way you planned.”

  Crap. Not only had I forgotten about the dinner, I’d forgotten I was supposed to put something together for dessert. Mark’s sister-in-law Megan had asked me a week ago.

  Your case is half won or half lost on the first impression, my dad used to say.

  I wasn’t going to have Mark’s parents’ first impression of me be that I couldn’t be counted on to follow through on my promises. “Of course.”

  Now I just had to pray I could reach Nancy, the woman in charge of all Sugarwood’s additional maple syrup products, and that she had a dazzling maple syrup recipe I could make with what I had in my sadly neglected cupboards.

  The face that looked back at me in the mirror the next morning reminded me too much of Toby’s sunken-eyed, jowly Bullmastiff face for comfort. Served me right for staying up until only vampire bats were awake, trying to perfect the maple syrup butter tart recipe Nancy gave me. Maybe homemade baked goods weren’t intended to look like store bought. My lopsided butter tarts tasted fantastic—maple-flavored and not overly sweet—but they gave new meaning to the phrase hot mess.

  I let the dogs out of their crates. Velma bounced off the door and ran into a wall, her cone-covered head wagging from side to side. The look on her face clearly said Am I being punished for eating your shoes?

  I scratched under the cone edge. “It’s only until your incision heals. I promise.”

  If a dog could give me a skeptical eyebrow raise, I would have sworn Velma did.

  After feeding them and taking them out for a bathroom break, I flipped open my laptop. The email at the top listed the sender as Stacey Rathmell, and the subject line said Rejected Credit Card.

  Along with taking on the role of Sugarwood’s live-in mechanic, Stacey had also taken on the role of bookkeeper shortly after I hired her. She said she’d enjoyed doing it for her dad’s auto shop, and that she wanted to make sure she could still be a valuable employee once her pregnant belly got big enough to prevent her from climbing around under the machinery. I think in my excitement I may have tossed the responsibility at her so quickly that if they’d been actual ledgers I would have knocked her unconscious.

  Thankfully, she’d proven more than capable. It’d been weeks since she’d even had a question for me.

  I clicked open the email.

  Dave left a note on my desk that one of the guests on yesterday’s tour had a declined credit card. They were supposed to come back after the tour and remedy it. No show. It was for two tickets. Want me to pursue it?

  She included the name of the guest with the declined card. If my memory didn’t fail me, George Powers was the father with the teenage daughter.

  Amazingly, Stacey must not have heard the news yet. Or, more likely, she was being discreet. Her dad was the same way.

  Normally I would have told her to pursue payment since we were a business, not a charity. This time, they’d probably forgotten about fixing the payment glitch because they’d been hauled down to the police station to answer questions about a murder. Plus, they hadn’t gotten the tour they’d tried to pay for. I should refund everyone or offer them a make-up tour. Perhaps both.

  I sent Stacey a quick reply telling her to let it go and explaining what had happened. If she hadn’t heard, better the truth come from me than having her fed the rumors and speculation that’d soon circulate around Fair Haven. She’d find out anyway when we had to rectify the shorted
tour for the other guests.

  I ended it with a soft chastisement about working on a weekend. During the peak season, we all worked long hours, but the leaves were coming out on the trees now, which meant no more sap collection. According to what I’d learned about maple syrup production, the sap turned bitter as soon as the trees budded.

  Her almost immediate reply told me she was still at her computer.

  Working is better than being alone with my thoughts.

  I made a mental note to invite her over for dinner again soon. It was easy to forget how hard being an eighteen-year-old soon-to-be-single-mom must be on her. She needed me as a friend even more than she needed the job I’d given her.

  My doorbell rang, setting off a cacophony of barking. The decibel level of two large-breed barking dogs was enough to burst an eardrum. The dog trainer who ran Velma’s obedience classes said telling them to be quiet never worked because to a dog it sounded like you were barking along with them. Distract them, he said.

  I’d like to see him try to distract a Great Dane and a Bullmastiff protecting their home. Short of throwing them each one of my butter tarts, there wasn’t anything they wanted more than to bark at whoever came to my door.

  I glanced at the clock. It was only nine o’clock, so it wasn’t Mark. Besides, they’d finally adapted to the sound of his new truck. When he came to the door, they knew it was him, and the greeting was wagging tails and excited whines, not warning barks.

  Since I hadn’t yet showered, I was still in my fuzzy bathrobe and floppy slippers. Not exactly fit for company, but I wasn’t going to leave someone standing out in the cold, either.

  I peeked out the front window before answering the door—a throwback to my former life in the city and a consequence of how many people had tried to kill me in the last six months. A woman stood on the other side.

  I opened the door. Toby and Velma surged forward. I stuck out my leg to block them. Toby stopped in time. Velma didn’t. Her cone rammed straight into my thigh. That was going to leave a bruise.

  The woman on my front step jerked backward. She looked to be around fifty and carried a few more pounds than I was sure she would have liked, exactly how I expected I’d look at her age after I’d had a couple of kids. Maybe sooner if I didn’t lay off the sweets. She wore the type of medium-weight coat that Michiganders considered sufficient for March and I thought shouldn’t even be brought out of the closet until May.

  “Can I help you?” I shouted over the barking.

  She held a hand up to her ear. No wonder. I could barely hear myself.

  I tightened the belt of my bathrobe and stepped outside, closing the door behind me. It muffled the barking enough that we could at least hear each other.

  “Are you Nicole Dawes?” she asked.

  Even after months of living here, it still surprised me when someone shortened my last name and simply called me Nicole Dawes, the part of my name I’d shared with my Uncle Stan. Hopefully my mother would never hear about it.

  I nodded.

  She thrust a hand toward me. What looked to be a small blue square dangled in a clear plastic sandwich baggy. “Drew would have wanted you to have this.”

  And then, before I could so much as reach for the bag to figure out exactly what he would have wanted me to have, she burst into tears.

  4

  One of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world was watching someone else cry without knowing how to help them.

  I put an arm around her and ushered her into my house, where at least her tears wouldn’t freeze on her cheeks. Whether I startled the dogs or they sensed something was wrong, I couldn’t be sure, but they both backed off. Toby whined softly deep in his throat, and his ears slumped back against his head, making him look mournful.

  I pointed at their beds behind the woman’s back and mouthed the words go and stay. Toby went to his and laid down. Velma stood on hers, technically fulfilling my command, but kept on her feet, staring at us out of her satellite cone. If she were a human, I suspected she’d be a teenager, testing her boundaries.

  The woman flopped down onto one of my kitchen counter stools, and the baggy landed on the counter next to her. She fished around in her pockets and came up with a handful of tissues. Based on their droopy state, I suspected none of them were clean.

  I grabbed the kettle from my stove top. “Would you like a cup of coffee? Tea?”

  That was the best I could come up with for something to say. Counselor could safely be crossed off my list of potential future careers if I ever stopped working at Sugarwood.

  She nodded as her only answer and blew her nose. Which didn’t actually help me since she hadn’t told me what choice she’d prefer. I put the kettle on and started the coffee pot as well.

  I moved around the counter and took the seat next to her. The sandwich bag contained what looked like an SD card with the letters SW written on it. For Sugarwood, presumably. She’d said Drew would have wanted me to have it, and the only thing I could imagine Drew wanting me to have were the pictures he’d taken of Sugarwood.

  My throat felt like I’d taken a judo chop to my trachea. Good Lord, was this Drew’s mother? Her age would be about right. She didn’t look much like Drew, but I suspected based on its uniformity that her blonde hair was dyed, and Drew could have taken after his father. Now that we were sitting close together rather than standing out in the cold, I could see that her eyes had the puffy, bloodshot look of someone who’d been crying for hours.

  She snuffled again, and I dragged a box of tissues closer and nudged them toward her. Nothing I could say would make her feel better if she was a woman who’d lost her son less than a day ago, so I stayed quiet. It was the only way I knew to show respect for her grief.

  “The police took most of Drew’s things, his phone, his computer.” She dropped her used tissues into a pile on my counter and pulled out another handful from the box, but she held them clumped together in her fist rather than using them. “I found the memory card tucked into a file with your contract. He was so talented. I wanted his work to make it out into the world.”

  Her voice had the hollow note to it I’d heard before in people whose minds were struggling with denial of the truth and whose hearts felt like a piece had been gouged out of it.

  The SD card she’d brought me must be the one Drew replaced in his camera the day before his death. Drew had already given me a disk containing all the images he’d taken prior to yesterday. She didn’t need to know that, though. Right now, she simply needed to feel like a piece of her son would live on in his work. She needed to know he’d be remembered.

  I pulled the sandwich bag toward me. “Thank you. His work…it was some of the best I’ve ever seen, and I grew up in Washington, DC, so that’s saying something.”

  She gave a sharp bob of her head, like that was all she could manage in acknowledgment.

  The kettle whistled. I hopped up and pulled it off the burner. The only tea I had in the house was chamomile. I hated tea, but Mark claimed it would help me relax and sleep better so I wouldn’t have to keep using sleeping pills to deal with my bouts of insomnia. They’d gotten worse since my recent near-death experiences.

  Something calming might be perfect for Drew’s mom. I dropped a tea bag into the cup, poured hot water over it, and slid it toward her along with my little pot of honey.

  She stirred the cup of tea without seeming to actually see it. “He wanted to be a photojournalist. Did you know that? He was trying to save up enough money for college, for him and Holly both. They had such big—”

  Her voice clogged, garbling the rest of her sentence, but I could guess what she was going to say. They’d had such big dreams.

  It didn’t sound like Drew’s mother knew Holly was the prime suspect in his murder. I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell her and cause her more pain, especially since I wasn’t even supposed to know about it. I also wouldn’t be able to answer any of the questions she’d surely have. That news, when it
came, should come from the police.

  She raised her gaze to mine.

  I had to say something, but everything that came to mind seemed much too shallow. Drew was such a nice guy. I’m sorry for your loss. He’ll be missed.

  She’d hear enough of those in the coming days. Perhaps what I could give her was someone who wasn’t afraid to talk about him. That might soon be rare. “He did tell me. An employee of mine recommended him, but one of the reasons I hired him was I knew he wanted to pay for school. He would have made an excellent photojournalist. The angles in his photography were so fresh, and he noticed things that no one else seemed to.”

  She snuffled again and added to the Mt. Everest-sized pile of tissues in front of her. “He always did.” She pointed at the butter tarts on my cooling rack. “May I?”

  I brought some over on a plate, and the next thing I knew she was telling me stories about Drew as a little boy, Drew with his first camera, Drew always wondering about the private lives of the people they’d see in the mall or at a restaurant. As if maybe the real reason she’d come was because she needed a place to share her memories of Drew without having to bear the burden of someone else’s sadness. So she could let her own grief out without having to be strong for anyone else.

  Maybe that was the real reason my dad refused to come to my Uncle Stan’s funeral. Maybe he was afraid that he wouldn’t have been able to stay strong in front of me, strong for me.

  Or maybe I was still trying to turn my father into the kind of man he could never be because every little girl needed her dad to be her hero rather than the man who was so disappointed in her life choices that he hadn’t spoken to her in months.

  A knock sounded at my door. You’d think I’d put out a sign advertising free coffee from the traffic my house was getting today.

  I braced myself for the barking, but instead Toby’s tail whapped on his bed and Velma pranced in place. Only one person other than me got a happy dance when she’d been ordered to stay.

  My gaze shot to the clock on my oven. 11:30 on the dot.