Drizzled with Death(71)

“What did Hanley say?” Jill gave me the same cornered but still fighting look my niece and nephew do when they’re trying to wriggle out of trouble and it isn’t looking good for them. Even though I hadn’t asked him about it yet after speaking with Knowlton, it was time to see what she thought of their relationship.

“What do you think he said?” I watched her shoulders sag and the brave leaked all out of her.

“I think he said I was with him at first and then he told you the truth the minute you applied any pressure.”

“Well, if he is willing to hit you, I don’t think the relationship is all that good, do you?”

“He didn’t hit me. I lied when you came to see me that day.”

“You aren’t going to tell me you walked into a door, are you?”

“It was someone else.” Jill started to speak then stopped herself.

“Did another man hit you? It wasn’t your brother, was it?” Suddenly I feared for Piper’s safety. She might do a lot of things that felt unsafe to me, but she had never put up with an abusive man and I didn’t want to even consider the possibility that she could start.

“It was Alanza.” Jill sagged against the wall as if the weight of her secret had thrust her off her feet.

“Alanza hit you? Why?” The idea of a physical altercation between grown women in a civilized town was so tacky it nauseated me. It had been hard enough to think about Hanley using his fists on Jill, but to credit the damage to another woman was hard to wrap my mind around.

“It was about the trees.”

“The trees?”

“Lewis Bett had allowed me to tap the trees here for years since my own property isn’t big enough to produce the amount of sap I need to run a thriving business.”

“How does that lead to Alanza giving you a black eye?”

“As soon as Alanza decided to go into the sugaring business herself, she didn’t want anyone else to tap her trees. I reminded her I had a long-standing arrangement with Lewis and that he had promised me when he died it would still stand. He wanted the property to go on being an asset to the community.”

“What did Alanza say to that?”

“She said a whole lot of things were going to change on the property and that the townspeople ought to get used to it. I wasn’t the only one who would be affected and I should grow up about it.” I could relate to that conversation. It sounded like Celadon had been taking interpersonal relationship lessons from Alanza.

“That sounds threatening.” And like a reason someone might decide to get rid of her before she did any more damage to his or her interest in the property. “But you still haven’t explained the black eye.”

“I shoved her. She was right in my face, shaking her finger at me and calling me names. I snapped and I put both hands on her chest and shoved her into one of the very trees she didn’t want me to tap anymore.” Jill started panting a little, like she was reliving the experience.

“And then?”

“And then she hauled off and decked me. She knocked me right off my feet. My eye started to swell shut and my ears were ringing. I’d never experienced anything like it.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Lowell was forever being called out to domestic incidents. As a matter of fact, in the annual town report the police log listed four times as many domestic disturbance calls as any other single category.

“I started it. She could have pressed charges against me, too. It was ugly and embarrassing. And I hoped it would all blow over. It wasn’t likely she would change her mind about me tapping the trees if I set the police on her.”

“Is that the real reason why you weren’t at the pancake breakfast?”

“I didn’t want to show up with my face all swollen and I certainly didn’t want to run into Alanza.” But was Jill telling the truth now? It sounded too far-fetched and embarrassing to be made up, but she had lied in the first place about Hanley hitting her.

“So this happened on Friday night when you told me you were with Hanley at his camp?”

“That’s right. I had been planning on going up with Hanley that night, but he said since Alanza had closed her property to use by off-road vehicles, it wasn’t worth it to go up.” So neither of them had an alibi for the night the syrup was poisoned. Where was he if he wasn’t with Jill or Connie and he wasn’t up at his camp? And was Jill so angry with Alanza, she went to the grange and poisoned the syrup to get back at her for the fight and to regain the use of the trees? She wasn’t actually around to see the death, which made her look all the more suspicious to me. As much as I hated the idea, I was going to have to talk to Hanley again and try to worm out of him what he was up to.