Drizzled With Death (9 page)

“And it was only going to get worse with her deciding to scalp Bett’s Knob.”

“She was planning to do what?” I was horrified. Bett’s Knob lay within the confines of Alanza’s property, but the whole community felt it belonged to us all. It wasn’t a large part of the property, but it had a view that went on for miles. It rose up above the surrounding land enough to be visible from most of the town and boasted some of the finest displays of fall foliage in the area. As a matter of fact, after years of lobbying, the Chamber of Commerce had convinced the select board to approve plans for one of those oversized View-Masters alongside the turnpike to attract more business to town during leaf-peeping season.

The Chamber fund-raised and solicited donations from people all over the community and had even held an unveiling ceremony for the oversized View-Master. Myra Bett Phelps, one of the members of the family after whom the lumpy foothill formation was named, had the honor of yanking the red, white, and blue vinyl tablecloth off the thing and leading the crowd, such as it was, in an ear-thrumming rendition of the National Anthem.

“You hadn’t heard? Alanza announced at the last Chamber of Commerce meeting that she was going to start up a sugaring operation. When I asked her how much more she was planning to impact my inn, she told me about Bett’s Knob.” Why Alanza would choose to tap her own trees was entirely beyond me. I loved the business myself but I couldn’t imagine just deciding one day to go into it without any prior experience. It wasn’t as if she was even a country girl at heart. I’d never even seen her in a pair of shoes with a less than two-inch heel. I tried to picture her standing in a pair of snowshoes, wearing a miniskirt, drilling holes in a maple to place a spile. I couldn’t even picture her figuring out how to hold the drill, let alone tap the tree. The only thing I could imagine her tapping was her pointy-toed pumps to a lively beat at a dance club.

“She’d never have been allowed to clear Bett’s Knob, would she? What about filing an ‘intent to cut’ form with the town?”

“She didn’t need to file an intent to cut if the timber was being used to boil sap down for syrup.” He was right, of course. Alanza could have cut as much timber as she wanted if she used the wood for her own sugaring operation. And she had enough trees on the property to produce a lot of firewood and a lot of sap. As long as she didn’t confuse the maples for the firewood. If someone had killed Alanza, they had done the town an even bigger favor than I had thought.

“So just like the rest of us, I bet you weren’t too upset to see her face plant in the pancakes then.” It seemed like as good an opening as any. And it wasn’t like I was questioning him. We were just chatting about neighbors like anyone does from time to time. I had to keep it light. Alienating any potential business at this point would be disastrous. The last thing I needed was more ill will.

“The worst thing about that whole situation was that it didn’t happen before that God-awful shanty town sprang up.” Roland’s face was beginning to flush like an ice pop. Maybe he wasn’t going to be too long following Alanza off to wherever she went on the other side. Not that I’m saying I’d expect them to end up in the same place.

“Well, at least the construction on her property should grind to a halt. That should be good news for you and Felicia, shouldn’t it?”

“It’s great that nothing more is likely straightaway, but I don’t know what whoever gets the property now will do with it.”

“So you don’t know who will be getting the property then?”

“No idea. I didn’t know Alanza until she had settled into the house over there and started introducing herself around town as the owner. If I had known how things were going to go, I would have sold the business and headed south like all the rest of the geezers.”

“You’re not a geezer and you know it.” Felicia Chick, Roland’s wife of thirty-something years, emerged through the doorway, her arms full of folded table linen. “Are those from your grandmother?” She nodded toward the pickles.

“They are. She wanted me to bring them by so you’d be sure to have them for Thanksgiving. And she said to tell you she was sorry to have missed the quilting group Friday evening.”

“Tell her we missed her, too. Come on back to the kitchen. I’ve got the ones to trade on the counter.” Felicia thrust the stack of tablecloths and napkins into Roland’s outstretched arms. “Be a love and spread these round while I tend to Dani. And try to think of something pleasant. Your face looks like a blood sausage.” I followed Felicia’s slim frame to the back of the house, where the kitchen stood, warm and smelling of cinnamon and yeasted bread.

“I tried something a bit different this year. I hope your family will like it.” Felicia handed me a jar of crabapple pickles. I turned it around in my hand admiring the color as the fruit swirled gently in the rosy pickling liquid.

“Whatever made you think of these?” I asked.

“My mother used to make them and I was feeling nostalgic. You’re probably still too young to get that way, but someday once you’ve gotten older, those things your parents used to do will mean a great deal to you.”

“They already do. That’s why I’m so committed to making a success of Greener Pastures.” Making my father’s favorite thing, maple syrup, let me feel closer to him even though he was gone.

“How insensitive of me. I’m getting old and run at the mouth sometimes. Forgive me?” Felicia’s warm brown eyes crinkled with concern. She might have been ten years older than my mother but you couldn’t guess it looking at her.

“No need. I understand. So why did your mother make these?”

“She competed religiously at the local county fair, and Millicent Marcotte used to beat her for the blue ribbon every year. Finally, she had had enough and decided to go all out with something different.”

“Crabapple pickles?”

“We always had a bumper crop and she thought they were so pretty. She decided to tinker with them a bit at a time until she got the flavor just right. I’ll bet you can guess the secret ingredient.”

“Maple syrup?”

“You got it. She went to a neighbor who tapped his trees and got a gallon of it. Then she set to work in earnest.”

“How long did it take her to come up with something?”

“We ate a version of the darn things every night for at least a month.”

“But the crabapples wouldn’t have come ripe until after the fair, would they?”

“Well, that was the worst of it, waiting almost a whole year to enter them into the fair. Mother started picking fruit about a week after the fair was all over.”

“Did she enter anything at all that year?”

“No. She didn’t get around to it since she was so busy putting up trials of the new recipe. Millicent told everyone Mother had finally given up because she realized she just couldn’t win.”

“Please tell me she got back at her.”

“In spades. Mother won the blue ribbon, best in show, prettiest, and they even made a new category for most creative. After Mother died, they named the prize the Norinda Bett Folsom Ingenuity Award.”

“So your mother was a Bett, too, before she married?” There were more Betts coming out of the woodwork in Sugar Grove than carpenter ants.

“She was indeed. Between the Betts and the Greenes, we make up the majority of the population. When it comes down to it, Myra and I are cousins of a sort.”

“Speaking of Greenes, if I don’t get these pickles back to the house and start giving my grandmother a hand with the Thanksgiving preparations, I am going to be in big trouble.” Felicia walked me to the door, and in no time I was zipping along the road, headed for home and all the whirlwind of preparations for the upcoming holiday the family was stirring up.

I was up before Grampa on Tuesday morning and that took
some doing. Despite the fact the man never had to earn his living, all his life he had kept the hours of a dairy farmer. No one cared more about their herd than Grampa. But this morning I cared even more about my state inspection. My stomach was a mess, and I kept vacillating between feeling half starved and certain I’d lose anything I tried to choke down. I pulled three different almost identical outfits from the drawers and ended up choosing the one with the jeans that needed rolling up the least. Sometimes my hems are turned up so many times they look like my ankles are members of an Olympic snow-tubing team.

I had turned in the organic application to the state a while ago and I hoped my business was a shoe-in for certification. We didn’t have any diseases in our sugar bush, and we had been using an organically certified cleaner for the spiles and hoses as well as the buckets and jugs for years. My grandfather always said it didn’t honor the land to take something good and give back something bad so he never allowed it. Green practices were second nature at Greener Pastures, and it made the whole thing a lot easier. It also helped that we produced all our own sap. For the people like Jill Hayes, who tapped trees on property belonging to other people, the process was a whole lot more complicated. Not only did they have to run through all the fertilizers, pesticides, and cleaners used on their own property, they had to verify and document the ones used anywhere they tapped. Some sugar makers tapped sources all over the area so the organic certification could feel a bit overwhelming.

I wondered again how the tapping situation was going to affect Jill. I knew from the grapevine, and by that I mean Myra Phelps’s flapping jaws, that she relied heavily on the sap from the trees on Alanza’s property to stay in business.

Even though I felt good about my application, I was at the sugarhouse for a last round of tidying and pacing an hour before the inspector was due to arrive. Not that I was enjoying being in the sugarhouse all that much. My mother had made good on her threat of gussying the place up with a bit of Christmas cheer. Which meant everywhere I looked things twinkled, sparkled and glittered. She had even added a fake tree in the corner with blinking lights and a tinsel garland. I wondered if all that fake greenery would disqualify Greener Pastures for organic status. At least she hadn’t hidden the coffeemaker I had installed for the customers to enjoy. I busied myself making a pot to pass the final few minutes of my wait. By the time I’d located a couple of clean mugs and poured myself a steaming cup, I heard the clattering of heavy feet on the sugarhouse porch. This guy was never going to be mistaken for a mountain lion.

I took a breath that reached all the way to my thick-cuffed ankles and pulled open the door. Standing in the threshold was a real live garden gnome, complete with a drooping red hat and round rosy cheeks. The little old man standing in front of me was short enough that he looked me straight in the eye. Granted, my work boots had a very thick sole, which boosted me up by a couple of inches, but this was a first for me. I took a step back and wondered if my mental health was finally as eroded as a dirt road running down a mountain. I’d watched a couple of children’s movies with Hunter and Spring lately, but I didn’t think that could explain it.

“Are you Dani Greene?’ the gnome asked. I nodded, stunned to hear that the voice was not mechanized or quavery. “Good, good. It’s nice to meet you. Yep, very nice to meet you. I’m Brantley Sims. We have an appointment.” He held out a firm, small hand and grasped mine with bone-pulverizing vigor.

“Come on in.” I tugged a little at my hand, hoping he would relinquish it quickly since it felt like I’d caught it in a car door. Maybe he noticed my sharp intake of breath because he dropped my hand and opened a notebook. “I hope you found the place easily enough.”

“You bet I did. I’ve been roaming these hills long before there was such a thing as a GPS and I haven’t got lost yet. Now let’s get a jump on this. I’ve got a bunch of meetings today and I promised the wife I’d be home in time to help her greet my family when they roll in this evening for the holiday.” Lord forgive me, all I could envision was Snow White standing at a window twitching back the curtain and clucking her tongue as six white-haired little men made their way across her drive.

“Just tell me what you need. I’m eager to get this out of the way, too.”

“Why? Are you nervous? Trying to hide something? Got some kind of a guilty conscious?” He fixed a bright blue eye on me and poised his pen above his notebook like he was going to add my response to my permanent record. I gulped. And from his vantage point, I’m sure he could see it.

“No sir. I’m just eager to hear the good news that I can be certified organic. I’m just itching to update my website and let the customers know they can feel even better about our products.” And my prices could move up the scale a bit, too.

“And your prices will go up a good bit, too, if you pass, now won’t they?” I gulped again. “I’m just teasing. Don’t get yourself so worked up. You won’t live to be my age if you never develop a sense of humor.” He walked over to the evaporator and started poking around. For the next forty-five minutes he looked everywhere, rummaged around in cupboards, cabinets, and closets. He asked questions, wrote the names of cleaners in his notebook, and even snapped a few photos on a camera that looked like it took actual film. As the moments passed, I felt myself relax and even thought we were developing a rapport of a sort. We made our way into the shop area, where he made a beeline for the coffeepot.

“Is this organic?” I was gulping so much I wondered if it was possible to get an extended warranty on my Adam’s apple. I looked at the gnome and scrutinized his face for signs of mirth, humor, anything to get me off the hook.

“I’m not sure. I serve organic coffee during the high season when there are tourists in the shop, but I’m afraid this might be some my sister brought in from the house the last time she deigned to visit. Will that count against me?”

“I’m just joking. You really do need to lighten up.” He was right, though. I tried my best to walk the walk and those little things all mattered. My grandparents still made the majority of the decisions about the groceries, and I hadn’t been able to convince them coffee drinking had changed a bit since they bought their first can of Chock full o’Nuts. They like to think they are keeping up with the times in a lot of ways, but shade-grown and sustainable cups of joe weren’t even on the list.

“Well, then, would you like a cup?”

“I never touch the hard stuff when I’m working. It goes straight to my head.” And he elbowed me in the ribs. “You’re looking kinda peaky. Why don’t we take the air while you show me your sugar bush?” I nodded and opened the door leading out of the shop and to the parking lot, where customers had crowded onto the grassy verges in the height of leaf-peeping season. We picked our way across the semifrozen ground and entered the sugar bush at one of my favorite points on the property. An old, tumbled-down stone wall runs for a ways and then peters out at a beech tree, which looks like the one used in every fairy tale illustration. Its leaves rattled and quaked in the slight breeze. As the trees grew denser and larger, the carpet of crackling leaves beneath my feet grew more luxuriant. Acre after acre of the stately trees stretched above my head, some so close their branches touched and made it feel like a sanctuary in the woods.

“Your application says you don’t buy sap from any other producers.”

“That’s right. We make our syrup exclusively from our own sap. We tap the trees and boil it down right in the shack using wood from our own property.”

“So you’ve got a fairly good-sized setup here. You’re pretty young for such an ambitious project.”

“I’m not as young as I look.”

“And I’m not as old as I look, but that doesn’t change how much effort it takes to make a go of something as big as this.”

“No disrespect, sir, but my family has been making syrup for four generations. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t go out with my father to check the buckets or watch him fill the evaporator pan with sap. I may be young but I have over twenty years’ experience.”

“But do you have it in running a business?”

“No. But I want to. And I’m hoping organic certification is going to help me to get there.”

“From the looks of things, I think you stand a decent chance of that. Let’s finish touring the sugar bush then we’ll see if I have any more questions.”

For the next hour or so we moved across the property in much the same way he had moved about the sugarhouse. He was observant, methodical, and thorough. But by the time we’d worked our way back to the shop, I felt pretty good about my chances.

“Well, now that the work’s all done, I’d be delighted to accept that cup of coffee if you’re still offering, organic or not.” He winked at me, dipping an overgrown eyebrow down under his spectacles, where it got tangled up in the frame. He yanked it out with a gnarled finger and accepted the beverage. We were making small talk about the likelihood of favorable weather in spring for a decent sugaring season when I heard more clomping on the front porch.

I looked up at Lowell coming through the door. Thinking back, it seems he must not have spotted Brantley, not that I can blame him since he was almost completely hidden by a stack of crates displaying maple leaf printed dish towels, place mats, and napkins.

“Dani, we need to talk right away.” His voice was forceful and worried, two things I never associate with Lowell. He is always calm in any crisis. Tell him you lopped off an arm and he’d be tying a dog leash around what’s left while speaking with quiet authority to 911. I almost dropped my coffee cup at his tone.

“Can it wait?” Whatever it was, I knew I didn’t want to know it. No one is ever happy to know what will be said by someone who sounds like he did.

“No, it can’t. I got the results from the state lab. Alanza Speedwell was poisoned by ingesting Greener Pastures syrup. Something called Compound 1080 or sodium fluoroacetate. It’s a highly toxic pesticide that’s been off the market for quite some time.” My Adam’s apple froze in mid-bob. I should have been thinking of something else, I’m sure, but for some reason all I could focus on was whether or not an Adam’s apple could actually get stuck like an elevator trapped between floors. I was starting to feel a wave of panic crashing down on me when the gnome snapped me out of it and reminded me of what was important. Brantley stepped out to a spot where Lowell could see him.

“Did you say the syrup from this establishment killed someone?”

“Who are you?” Lowell looked a little like I must have when I spotted Brantley on my porch.

“I’m the state ag inspector here to review an application for organic certification, which no longer seems necessary.” He looked me over from head to foot. “No wonder you were so jumpy this morning. I should have put things together a little faster. The pancake breakfast incident on Saturday. That’s where I had heard the name
Sugar Grove
recently.”

“I’m afraid so. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t go telling all you know to anyone,” Lowell said.

“All I’m gonna say is this inspection is over. And I think you’ve got bigger problems than organic. This place is gonna be shut down completely.”

Lowell and I watched as the gnome fled as fast as his short little legs would carry him. He was out the door and down the drive in less time than it took a camel to swallow a homemade granola bar.

“I need to let the family know what is going on.”

“Yes, you do. But I wouldn’t be too worried. We tested all the other jugs at the breakfast and hers was the only one that had been tampered with. I will need to check out your supply, though.” Lowell clapped a gentle hand down on my shoulder.

“What a nightmare. Can you imagine what it will do to business if any more syrup is found to be poisoned?”

“Try not to think about it too much. You’ve got all kinds of things to worry about, like surviving the holidays and finding a husband.”

“Don’t you start in on my love life. I’ve got enough trouble between Knowlton and Mitch.”

“And don’t forget about the camel who sounds like quite the kisser.”

“You heard about that?”

“Of course.”

“You will tell the family about it gently, right? You know how Grampa looks like a strong blustery guy but something like this is really going to throw him for a loop.”

“I’ll be careful. And I’ll reassure them we only found poison in the syrup at Alanza’s place setting.”

“I’m not entirely sure that will help.”

“You know I’m going to have to ask some uncomfortable questions to eliminate you as suspects, right?” Lowell looked at his uniform shoes and I thought I saw the faintest bit of a blush spread under his cheeks. I had never considered how a crime might worm its way between Lowell and my family. He had always seemed like one of us more than not. I often forget about Lowell having any family other than us. His parents died in a house fire along with the family dog while Lowell was away in the service. He came back to Sugar Grove at the end of his hitch and my family tried to fill his loss.