Drizzled with Death(70)

“I’m not proud I got so far as the parking lot, but I am proud to say I got no farther. I stayed in my truck deciding what to do until closing time.”

“So you were in the parking lot until around one a.m.?”

“I was. Then I dragged my sorry self home and snuck into bed next to Felicia and tossed and turned all night long.” At least that’s what he said he did. There were a few hours between then and the time the breakfast started to slip into the grange hall and poison the syrup. And like almost everyone else in town, Roland had a key to the place.

“Well, that explains why you looked so beat the next morning at the pancake breakfast.” At least, it could explain it.

“It explains my performance, too. I’m gonna beat your grandfather some year if it is the last thing I do.” Roland nodded his head like he needed convincing. Which everyone would. Grampa was a force of nature when it came to pancakes.





Eighteen





Since it was just next door to Roland and Felicia’s inn, I decided to poke around at Alanza’s property. It was silent when I pulled in and stepped out of the car. Even the birds and squirrels seemed to be giving the place a miss. I wasn’t sure if it was a sort of commentary on Alanza herself and the energy she had put forth while living there, or even the natural world’s commentary on storage facilities. The squat little office building for the storage facility was set back enough to obscure it from sight of passersby out on the road.

If someone was going to kill Alanza, I wondered why he or she decided to do it in such a public fashion. Why not just sneak out here and clunk her over the head in the middle of the night? Why would someone need to implicate my business in their beef with her? Was Alanza even the intended victim or was Greener Pastures? Maybe she was just someone easy to dispose of because of her unpopularity in the community. No one would miss her and she was doing her best to cause problems.

But what reason would anyone have to bother Greener Pastures? I didn’t think I had any enemies particularly, but maybe I was being shortsighted. Knowlton had been chasing me for so long, it was a town-wide joke. Maybe he was tired of being mocked and tired of being rejected. And Tansey wasn’t any too happy with me either. As far as she was concerned, I had missed the boat by passing up what her darling son had to offer. She also might have blamed me for another sugaring operation starting up in Sugar Grove.

I thought about Lowell and whether or not he had considered the possibility that killing Alanza with Greener Pastures syrup was much more deliberate than I had first thought. I would have asked him about it, but since I was avoiding him like I avoided people with the stomach flu, I couldn’t very well do that.

I rounded the corner of the building and spotted Jill Hayes pulling a box out of her jeep. In the bright clear light of day it was still possible to make out her bruising under a heavy cover of makeup. I called out to her and she dropped the box on the ground, spilling most of the contents.

“You scared me half to death.” Jill and I both squatted down at the same time to retrieve the scattered tree-tapping supplies, and we smacked heads. Now I was going to have a bruise.

“Sorry. I’m glad to see you out and about. Are you feeling better?”

“I was until you banged heads with me. What are you doing here?” I had to think fast. Then I thought of the perfect excuse.

“I lent Alanza a book about sugar making and I thought she might have left it here. I wanted to get it back before whoever inherits starts clearing out the place.”

“Good idea. Once that happens, you probably won’t see it again,” Jill said.

“So what brings you by?” Jill had no better reason to be there than I did.

“I was just checking on some of the equipment I had here for tapping the trees. You know how busy it gets during sugaring season.”

“It looks like you were bringing supplies in, not checking on what was already here.” I handed her a spile. She blushed and took it.

“I guess I don’t know if I’m coming or going lately.”

“That would explain the problem with your story about being at Hanley’s camp Friday night.”

“What do you mean?” Jill stood, the box forgotten on the ground.

“Knowlton says you weren’t with Hanley on Friday night like you said you were. He said no one was up there at all.”

“Knowlton is a fruitcake who talks to a stuffed woodchuck when he’s looking for some company.”

“He may be an eccentric but he doesn’t tend to lie.” Except for all that stuff he said about me and the contortionism to anyone in the world of taxidermy who would listen.