Drizzled with Death(39)

“So no inner seal like those pieces of plastic film covering the opening but under the cap itself.”

“That’s right. All someone would need to do would be to twist open the cap, cut off the lower ring left behind, and replace it with a new cap that matched the others. Alanza would never have noticed a thing.” Creepy. Now there was something else I was going to need to consider when it came to modernizing the operation. I really resented how evil made so much more work and cost for the rest of us. When I thought about all those little plastic pieces of film degrading and turning into pollutants because some people wanted to hurt others, I just wanted to screech.

“So who would know that?” Lowell asked.

“I suppose anyone who had ever participated in the contest or had been the one to open a jug for the first time at the fund-raiser or had ever bought our syrup would know there was no inner film. I’m not sure the average person would remember, though.”

“But someone who wanted to kill Alanza might have noticed.”

“Or someone who makes syrup. None of us use the film. It just doesn’t seem worth it.” Or it hadn’t until now.

“Other sugar makers had reasons not to like Alanza, too, didn’t they?”

“Some did. She didn’t make anyone happy when she stopped allowing some of the smaller operations to tap her trees.”

“Didn’t Jill Hayes and her brother have permission to tap there?” Lowell asked.

“I believe they did but so did quite a number of other people.”

“We don’t know if any of the stored syrup has been tainted. I suggest you suspend sales until we can get to the bottom of this,” Lowell said. “I need you to show me where the syrup is stored so I can get Mitch to start rounding it up for testing.” Great, more reasons for Mitch to be relieved he had broken up with me. But if it was the only way to stay in business, then I had to act more mature than I felt and get on with it.

“Follow me.”

I walked back to the storage area, knelt before the cupboard, and retrieved a contest bottle. These special bottles were made of clear glass and shaped like the state of New Hampshire. The caps were always a deep green as a nod to the family name. Grampa never worried about the expense of anything; he worried about the value. He had the bottles custom-made as a consolation prize for all the other contestants.

I dug around in the back of the bottom shelf and felt a ruffle-ridged side of another New Hampshire bottle. I pulled it toward me and saw exactly what I’d expected. I bent even farther into the cupboard and pulled all of them out. When we bottle syrup in early spring, we don’t know how many people will sign up for the pancake contest in November. It varies wildly from year to year with the only consistent contestant being Grampa. So, to be better safe than sorry, we fill twenty-five glass bottles every year. They are all the same. Every year.

Most of the time we have around six to eight contestants, but a few times we’ve needed all twenty-five. One year we even had to dig into the leftovers from the year before but that was because there was a family of twenty-six competitive eaters who happened to be staying at Roland’s inn just in time for the competition. Grampa didn’t eat for three days after that year’s contest, and truth be told, he didn’t eat pancakes for over a month. Grandma was a little insulted, then worried, that it took him so long to get back in the game.

I ran my eyes over the bottles. All had identical dark green plastic caps. I ducked back down for plastic jugs of the sort we donated for the larger tables. These were brown plastic, with dark brown caps. We donate the grade B because most people enjoy the pronounced maple flavor. Besides, there’s a lot more of it to be had, so it makes good business sense to donate what’s not in short supply.

Every one of the jugs was consistent with its type. I explained all of it to Lowell and he made a bunch of notes. We put it off as long as we could, but finally we both ran out of reasons we weren’t ready to head to the house to deliver the bad news to the family.





Ten





Lowell had them all go through their versions of the syrup delivery. Everyone said just about what I would have expected. They placed the syrup on the tables, locked up the grange hall, and returned home. Everyone was in bed by just past ten since the next day needed an early start. By the time they were done telling what they knew, my family looked grim.

Grampa slouched in a chair, one of his bandanna handkerchiefs draped over his knee, which meant he was choked up. I guess it must have been the Greener Pastures involvement that did it since he certainly wasn’t keen on Alanza when she’d been sucking down breath and spewing out vitriol.