A Sticky Situation (16 page)

“I'm delighted someone will be there keeping an eye on her.” Frances leaned in close to me and dropped her voice to barely a whisper. “And all the things I left stored when I moved here. There's almost no room in this place for anything. Except the listening devices.” She motioned with her head toward the back of the room like she wanted to draw my attention to something hidden. I lowered my voice to match hers.

“There isn't anything stored in the apartment.”

“Not in the apartment, in the storage area, which is also on the second floor. Priscilla was kind enough to suggest I leave all the things I couldn't bear to part with when I moved. Will you do me a favor and check that my photo albums are still there?”

“I certainly will if you want me to. Do you want me to bring any of them to you?”

“That would be very kind. I'd love it if you'd bring me the brown leather album with gold lettering. There's a scrapbook there, too.”

“Where should I look for them?”

“In some cardboard boxes near the back, I think.”

“I'll look for them later this week and bring them to you soon.” Frances nodded then winked at me slowly like we had an understanding. She raised her voice back to a normal speaking level.

“How do you like the place?”

“I've loved it ever since the first time I saw it. Do you remember me dropping off amaryllis bulbs every year from the school fund-raiser?” Looking back, poor Frances must have spent all her pay during school fund-raiser months since every child in town was sure to have approached her and she never turned anyone away.

“There were so many children over the years. There was one little girl that insisted on coming into the apartment to make sure my order was exactly right. She never seemed to want to get on her way.”

“That was me. Your apartment was so adorable and I felt so at home there I couldn't wait to go inside.”

“I felt that way about it, too, the first time I saw it. That was my first place of my own, you know.”

“I didn't know that.” From my calculations that would have put Frances in her fifties around the time she got her first place. I felt my hands grow clammy.

“Yes it was. I lived with my parents until I was fifty-two years old. But despite a slow start I was determined to make up for lost time.”

“What made you decide to leave home?”

“A man, of course. What else?” I suddenly felt like we had more in common than I really wanted to admit. At least I hadn't waited until I turned fifty-two to strike out on my own. Not that I wanted to share any of that
with Frances. It was hard enough having the family tease me about it. “What's the name of your fella?” Frances reached over and placed another cookie on my plate.

“I made the decision to move out because it was time to try something new.”

“Of course you did, dear. Just like you are here to drop off books from Priscilla. Who really sent you?” Her harsh tone startled me so much I gasped and a piece of lemon cookie lodged in my throat. For a moment I thought my life would flash before my eyes.

All I could think of as I tried to get the bite of soulless factory-produced cookie to move up or down was the shame it would bring to Grandma if I died while cheating on her baked goods. I grabbed at my tea and forced the cookie into submission with the power of Earl Grey.

“I can't believe they would stoop so low as to send you here to spy on me.” Frances crossed her arms over her chest and started rocking slowly in her seat. It looked like the visit was going downhill faster than Hazel and her naked bobsled team. Time to change tactics.

“Don't you remember? I came to ask your advice about making sure money didn't get stolen from the maple festival.”

“I don't remember anything about all that.”

“Are you sure?” I leaned forward and tried to sound patient and encouraging.

“It's all very fuzzy. It must have been thirty years ago, at least.” Frances stared blearily at a spot on the floor.

“There was a lot of trouble when someone disappeared from Sugar Grove without a trace.”

“That sounds sort of familiar but I can't remember any details.”

“I'm not surprised since there haven't been any details all this time. But something's finally turned up in the town hall basement. Under a pile of coal left over from the old heating system.”

“And what was that?” Frances's eyes no longer looked unfocused. Rather, as she took a ladylike sip of her tea, her eyes looked like those of the mountain lion I had encountered a few months back. Large, curious, and vaguely like they would help with some pouncing.

“A body,” I said.

“I hadn't heard a thing. What body?” Frances looked at me like she had just swallowed a fish bone.

“The one in the basement at the town hall. Russ Collins found it when he was working on the new furnace for the renovation.” I was stunned that Priscilla hadn't told her all about it during one of her many visits.

“Do they know who the body belonged to?”

“People are saying it was Spooner Duffy.” Frances's teacup slipped from her hands and crashed to the floor, splashing hot tea all over her lap.

“Get out. Get out of here this instant.” She shoved her chair back with a screech so loud I thought the vinyl flooring was ripping.

“What did I say?”

“I never want to hear the name Spooner Duffy again as long as I live. And I don't care who hears me.” Frances
shouted at the far side of the room. I assumed she was making sure the listening devices could hear her.

“What's wrong?”

“You want to know what's wrong? Ask your damned Aunt Hazel, that shameless hussy.” Frances grabbed me by the arm once more and pulled me from my seat. She yanked open the door and shoved me out into the hall. “Tell Priscilla I said thank you very much for the books.” Then she slammed the door in my face so hard I thought my eardrums would pop.

It seemed no matter what I did it all came back to Hazel being a giant pain in my backside. I could feel Frances's eyes on me just peering through the peephole as I tried to walk with as much dignity as I could muster down the hall. I felt considerably less cheery as I retreated than I had when I entered earlier.

Myra is easy to find and easier to get talking. Especially if you bring her a cinnamon roll with maple cream cheese frosting from the Stack. I handed her a take-out box still hot from the oven. Between bites, she was happy to tell me all about the feud between Frances and Hazel.

“Do you have any idea why Frances Doucette would call Hazel a shameless hussy when I mentioned Spooner Duffy?”

“Because he was carrying on with your aunt Hazel. Of course, she was already divorced when all the nonsense happened.” From the malicious gleam in her eye I wasn't sure I wanted to hear anything else about Hazel but there was no stopping Myra once she got going. “I couldn't believe I'd see the day when there was a fistfight between two women over a man in the middle of Main
Street. Especially when both of them were over fifty at the time. Your aunt had a mean right hook, I can tell you.”

“Dare I ask about the other woman involved?”

“Frances Doucette, of course.”

“Hazel was duking it out with Frances in the center of town over Spooner?” I tried to imagine the look on my grandmother's face when she heard the news.

“By the time Preston rolled up in the cruiser, each woman was clutching a chunk of the other one's hair in her mitten. If it weren't for the bald patches I bet Preston would have arrested them both.”

“Why didn't he arrest them?”

“He said he figured they'd both learned their lesson. It did them a sight more good to sit in a chair at the hairdresser than it would have to throw them in a cell. Excuse me for saying so, but I would have expected something like that from Hazel. But Frances, that came as a shock. Generally, she's such a proper lady. Almost too proper.”

I had to agree. Frances might be a bit tart in her speech now but she never behaved in such a way as to call unnecessary attention to herself. She was the sort of woman in another era that would have been described as genteel.

“Did either of them say what they were fighting about?”

“Each one accused the other of stealing Spooner away from her.”

“Were you the only witness to what happened?” With a town the size of Sugar Grove, I couldn't imagine no
one pulled over to the side of the road to watch the action. After all, the most exciting thing to happen around here generally involved dramatic collisions between vehicles and moose out on the highway.

“Good Lord, no. Half the town turned out.”

“Do you remember anyone specifically?”

“The Giffords were there and the pastor tried to break them apart, which is how I know about Hazel's right hook. Pastor couldn't see out of one eye for a week.” That explained why my grandparents were so uptight about the way we all behaved in church. “Jim Parnell had a front-row seat and Tansey was so distressed by the carryings-on she sat right down on the curb and put her head between her knees like she felt faint and queasy.” Or like she was pregnant with Knowlton and couldn't believe Spooner was seeing other women, too.

Once again I had to consider if Tansey's distress at seeing the spoons found in the basement had more to do with Spooner's body being discovered than it had at finding out he was dead. Was there any chance she had been the one to kill him? She certainly was strong enough and if she thought someone else might keep him from marrying her and helping to raise his son she might have been angry enough to do it.

*   *   *

I drove straight to Greener Pastures. Not only did I plan to ask Hazel about her involvement with Spooner but I needed to turn my attention to the sugaring operation. The
weather had warmed up enough for the sap to begin flowing freely once more. More freely than information about the stolen money at any rate.

My first stop was the sugarhouse. The sugarhouse felt toasty warm with the evaporator chugging along turning sap into golden, thick syrup. When I was a child one of my first official jobs in the sugarhouse was as a taster. It's still my favorite part of the work. Dozens of squat jugs sat filled on the bench running along the long wall of the sugarhouse. The artwork on the labels brought a smile to my face like it always did. I loved the scene of the Greener Pastures sugar bush it portrayed. On the label there were bare sugar maples standing outside the sugarhouse, each with a galvanized metal sap bucket hanging on its side.

I opened the door of the firebox and checked to see if it needed more wood. I stuck in two more fat logs for good measure and then looked into the evaporating pan. After making so many batches over the years I could usually tell just by looking how close to finished the syrup was. Just to be on the safe side, though, I tested its doneness with a hydrometer. This batch still had a few hours to go.

I spent a little time in the office at the back of the sugarhouse shop checking e-mail and responding to queries. Bills needed paying, too, and then there was the business of checking the website for online orders. Creating an online store was one of the other ways we had increased our profits. It had been almost as tough to convince my grandparents a website was needed as it
was to convert them to the idea of using tubing to collect sap. But in the end, even they agreed it had been a great idea.

After putting it off as long as I could, I decided there was nothing else to keep me from going to look for Hazel. I grabbed my jacket from its peg by the door and headed into the house. It was easy enough to find her. In fact, it would have been harder to miss her.

In spite of my grandparents' strict no-smoking policy I followed the smell of cigar smoke into the television room at the back of the first floor. Her cigar smoking was one of the many reasons she functioned as the family's patron saint of vices. When we were growing up, all any adult had to say to correct our behavior was that we were reminding him or her of Hazel.

“So here you are back again so soon after stealing off like a thief in the night.” Hazel flicked ash into a candy dish perched on the arm of a threadbare chair.

“How could you possibly accuse me of sneaking off with the way you took it upon yourself to announce my business before I had the opportunity to do so?” I crossed the room and opened a window. If we could make it through the visit without Grandma having apoplexy over smoking in her home we'd all be happier for it.

“Don't tell me you were homesick after just one night away from home?” That was a cheap shot. It was no secret that several of the members of the Greene family suffered from severe homesickness, myself included. It had been so bad I thought I would have to leave college before the end of the first week.

“No, Hazel, I passed a very pleasant evening in my new place last night. Besides, you didn't think moving into an apartment meant I wouldn't be running my business, did you?”

“I suppose that wouldn't be your style.”

“I've been at the sugarhouse working for the last couple of hours. When I finished up I thought I'd see if you were around.”

“Looking for advice on how to handle that handsome devil of a game warden now that you've got your own place, are you?” Hazel leered at me and held out her cigar. “Want a puff? It'll do wonders for your bad-girl image.”

“Actually, I'm here to ask you something but it's not about my love life.”

“Well that's no fun.” Hazel took another drag on the cigar herself and blew out a perfectly formed smoke ring.

“I was over visiting Frances Doucette this morning.”

“Is she still convinced someone is bugging her house?”

“She mentioned there were some listening devices in her apartment.”

“That Frances always has had the craziest things to say.”

“Crazy is exactly how she sounded when I mentioned Spooner Duffy.”

“She did, did she?”

“She tossed me out and told me if I wanted to talk about Spooner I should ask you. Now why would she
say that?” I watched Hazel for any signs of discomfort. Not that I was sure what that would look like on her. I had never noticed her looking the least uncomfortable in any circumstance. She even managed to look triumphant laid out in the back of an ambulance when her attempt at being Sugar Grove's first human cannonball went horribly awry.

“Well, it might be on account of the dispute over Spooner we were involved in.” Hazel shifted in her chair and I thought I detected a faint blush staining her cheeks.

“What kind of dispute?” After what I had heard from Myra I wasn't really in the dark but I wanted to hear Hazel's side of the story, too.

“It was of a private nature.” Hazel slowly slid her hand up to her head and slipped her fingers under the brim of her fedora. She looked like she was checking something.

“Brawling on Main Street is hardly private.” Hazel started moving her fingers like she was rubbing a worry stone.

“Frances didn't tell you that. Who's been filling your ears with tales?”

“I would have thought you'd have been crowing about it yourself. Especially since Spooner had to have been twenty years younger than either you or Frances.”

“What can I say, those young fellers can't keep their hands off me. I bet your game warden didn't tell you everything that passed between us the other day at
lunch.” I was pretty sure she was right but I hoped anything Graham had held back was to keep me from mortification and embarrassment.

“Let's stick to Spooner. Are you saying you and Frances were both interested in him?”

“Frances was convinced he was in love with her.” Hazel dropped her hand back into her lap. “Of course, he was actually completely taken with me. He never gave Frances a second look, as much as she wanted him to.”

“Is that what led to you assaulting Frances on Main Street?”

“That's not how it went at all.”

“Tell me how it did go, then.” I sat on the ottoman opposite her and propped my chin on my hands like I had all the time in the world.

“I was minding my own business, just coming out of Bartleby's with a new sweater I planned to wear to the festival. Those alpine ski sweaters were very popular right about then and I treated myself to one.” Hazel took a deep breath. “I had been feeling a bit low, if you must know, and thought a bit of shopping would cheer me up.”

I had never even considered that Hazel could feel low. It was like hearing a glacier was spotted sliding across the Sahara. My shock must have registered on my face because she continued.

“The divorce had left me a bit off my game.” Hazel's divorce had been big news in the family. Hers was the first anyone could remember. As much as Hazel had prided herself on doing just as she pleased for as long
as I can remember, I'd heard she felt cruddy about the breakup of her marriage.

“I'm sure it was hard. From what I understand, divorce was a lot less popular than ski sweaters back then.” Hazel looked at me and her face crumpled. For a moment I thought she would cry. Instead, she took another drag on her cigar.

“Everyone thought it was all my fault, of course. Because I was the one who did the leaving. It wasn't easy having everyone call you a hussy and worse. But it was the right thing to do. I couldn't have my daughters watching my marriage and thinking by my acceptance of the way I was treated that they ought to let themselves be treated that way, too.” This time a trickle of a tear slipped out of one of her eyes and down the side of her long nose. She ignored it.

“It must have been pretty bad.”

“Have you ever wondered why I'm the only one in the family who doesn't give you a hard time about not being married yet?”

I hadn't ever noticed but now that she mentioned it Hazel never did try to marry me off. Sure, she inquired after my love life but all she ever did was encourage me to have fun. I had always thought she was trying to inspire behavior that would worry my grandparents. Maybe she was really trying to keep me from the road she had traveled.

“Why didn't you ask the family for help?”

“I gladly moved all the way to California with that man just so my family couldn't see how he treated me.
I was too embarrassed. Being far away gave us an easy excuse to not be here for family dinners and holidays.”

“It's hard to imagine you being embarrassed about anything.” Which was true. Hazel was the most unabashedly brazen person I had ever met in my life.

“It was the incident with Frances and the sweater that turned me into the woman I am today.” This, I had to hear. I watched as she snuck her hand up to her head again. “Like I said, I was coming out of Bartleby's feeling like I might be home to stay, even with all the whispers and rumors I had been trying not to notice. That's when Frances came up to me and started shoving me.”

“How did that turn you into a devil-may-care rabble-rouser?”

“She said Spooner was going to marry her and I had better stop trying to wedge myself between them. She accused me of being used merchandise and said since I had already had one man I didn't see fit to keep ahold of, I should keep my hands off hers and any others that might be around.”