Roland had developed angina and a nervous twitch. His wife had taken on the new hobby of constantly monitoring his blood pressure. It was a wonder Roland had outlasted Alanza. With the breakfast rush over, Roland leaned against the front desk looking like he had nothing on his mind but time.
“Hey there, Dani. What brings you by? Lowell was already here confiscating your syrup for testing.” I hadn’t even considered that could happen. He hadn’t mentioned it to me. But maybe I wasn’t his first priority while handling a murder investigation. I wasn’t so overwhelmed with a sense of my own importance that I couldn’t see that without being told. Still, it was a bit of a blow to realize my syrup was being treated like a public health hazard.
“Actually, I’m here for the pickles. Only three days ’til Thanksgiving.” I reached into my tote bag and dug out two jars of Grandma’s famous maple syrup bread-and-butter pickles. “But I wish I were here delivering syrup. I don’t know when I’ll be back in business.”
“I’m so sorry. I know what it means to have a business you’ve worked so hard to establish turn to a pile of horse dung right in front of your eyes.”
“That view of the storage facility is pretty bad.” Even in the daylight it was easy to see Alanza’s custom-ordered, very pricey, neon sign, flashing on and off with enough wattage to kill bugs from a distance. It looked like Santa had put his head together with a Las Vegas casino owner to design the thing. When she had first turned it on, panicked calls had come into the police station from all over the area saying Sugar Grove was being visited by alien crafts.
“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.