Drizzled With Death (14 page)

“Every time I run into you, you think I’m crazy. Is it just me or is it women in general?”

“It’s just you. I can’t remember any other woman ever making the sort of impression on me that you seem to.” That knocked me off balance. I wasn’t sure if he was flirting with me or insulting me again.

“If you think I’m crazy, you’re going to enjoy meeting my mother on Thursday.”

“Does she see imaginary animals, too?”

“She sees auras, ghosts, and spirit guides.” Last week, she had tried to get me to join her for a sacred cleanse session in preparation for the toxins we would be experiencing over the holidays. It involved drinking algae shakes and standing knee-deep, naked as jay birds, in a stream at the edge of the property under the glow of the full moon. I had declined, citing the ill effects of frostbite on my already too tiny bustline. “And for the record, I may have more proof about the mountain lion that was anything but imaginary.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No, really. The same night I called you, another woman in town had something break into her goat enclosure.”

“What makes you think that means it was a mountain lion? Lots of things could have done that.”

“Could lots of things have slashed the haunch on one goat and carried a second one off over the top of the twelve-foot fencing?”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I was over there myself talking to Connie. She was all torn up about it.”

“People leave their gates open a lot more frequently than they realize they do. That is a lot more likely than something dragging a goat over a fence that high.”

“Connie treats her goats like her own kids.”

“They are her own kids.”

“Very funny. You know what I mean. She wouldn’t forget to do anything that had to do with their safety. She crochets blankets for each of them to coordinate with their fur. She even designed a goat bonnet for the ones she thinks have cold ears.”

“So most of the women in Sugar Grove are crazy by the standards of most other places.”

“I don’t know about that, but Connie is devoted to her goats.”

“Did she actually see anything?”

“She discovered it after the fact.”

“Unless she saw something, I’ve got animals people are actually seeing that need to be rounded up.”

“I remember calling about a mountain lion I had actually seen, but my eyewitness report didn’t seem to convince you I wasn’t crazy.”

“I’m still not convinced. And considering how long it’s taking to round up the rest of those animals, I am not sure I’ll get out to check on the report anytime soon. I’d suggest taking some photos.”

“Which you’ll just say are doctored.”

“Most likely. I’ve seen a lot of those. I’d be thrilled to discover mountain lions in New Hampshire, but there is just no evidence and I don’t think there is going to be any.”

“I think it is safe to bet you won’t be the one to make a discovery. I don’t think you can see things that are right in front of your face.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that.” He stared down at me with his deep blue eyes, little laugh crinkles around the edges standing out against his fading tan. I felt flustered and unsure what to say. After so many years of fending off Knowlton and his absolutely clear stance on his interest in me, I didn’t quite know what to think about this. I was out of practice with flirting and out of practice with most men in general. It’s not like I am a pariah, but I don’t leave town too often now that Internet shopping is a thing and eligible men are about as rare as mountain lions in Sugar Grove and about as startling.

“So if I hear about any more mountain lion sightings in the area, you’d want to know about them?”

“Absolutely. If I’m not up to my armpits in missing tortoises and monkeys.”

“At the rate you’re going, you’ll be chasing creatures around this village until you’re ready for retirement.”

“Even after the exotic animals are all rounded up, I may still be chasing around a local creature, a small one with a feisty attitude and a surly disposition.” He smiled at me again. I gulped. I wondered what Celadon told him when she invited him to Thanksgiving dinner. He seemed like he was more interested in me with each sentence slipping through his lips. Had she said I was desperate? Had she told him I was interested in him? Had he decided I was lying about what Knowlton had said and that I was, in fact, very passionate and flexible? The day had been too long and too emotionally exhausting to tangle with him. I needed to get out of there, and even going back home seemed like a good idea in comparison with sticking around any longer.

“I’ve got to go.” I cranked on the window and he stuck his finger in the remaining crack, preventing me from closing it all the way.

“What’s the hurry? Was it something that I said?”

“It’s fine. I’m in a hurry.” There was no way I was going to get into the details of my family life at the end of such a terrible day. Especially not with someone who’d left me feeling as off-kilter as Graham had.

He held up his hands and backed away like I was holding a gun on him. “Until tomorrow.”

Standing in the dining room on Thanksgiving at about two o’clock,
I could almost hear the old oak table groaning and gasping for air under the weight of Grandma’s week’s worth of work. I noticed with pleasure the maple cranberry sauce, the yeasted pumpkin rolls snuggled down all cozy into a towel-lined basket, the steaming bowl heaped with mashed sweet potatoes dressed up with butter and maple syrup.

What I was not at all pleased to see was a place card sitting dead center in the plate nearest me. I leaned in for a closer check. My grandmother doesn’t usually worry about place cards, saying people will pretty much sort themselves out in just the way she would have done anyway. This had to be Celadon’s doing. It was definitely her handwriting. I wouldn’t have put it past my mother to be involved, but this had Celadon written all over it. And I think I could guess why.

I had circled the table looking for my name. Sure enough, tucked into a corner, down at the end next to a place card with my name, was one with Graham’s. I picked his up and was looking for a new place to put it when he walked in carrying a plate of stuffed mushrooms. Evil. The whole family knew I couldn’t resist a stuffed mushroom. They must have been betting on the messenger receiving credit for the message. I wasn’t going to fall for that, but I was going to get a mushroom.

With a table this long, it can be difficult to get every dish passed in your direction unless you jump up on your seat and holler. I learned early on not to make that mistake a second time. No matter how cute she tells you she thinks you are, no one is allowed to stand on one of Grandma’s dining room chairs hollering for more turkey like a drunken lord in a mead hall. Or so I’ve heard.

“Your grandmother asked me to make sure you got one of these before the rest of the guests eat them all. She mentioned not wanting a repeat of your fifth Thanksgiving.” He lowered the platter toward me, and I looked at them like I was pretending to decide. As I went to load up one hand with the other, I noticed I was still holding Graham’s place card. He noticed it, too. That’s another thing I didn’t like so much about policemen—they were always noticing something but usually not the thing you hoped they would, like a new haircut or the way a pair of earrings set off your eyes. They were much more likely, in my experience, to notice the bit of steak between your teeth left over from lunch or how you misused a new vocabulary word from your word-a-day calendar. “Why are you holding my place card?”

“I was just checking that Celadon spelled your name correctly. I can’t stand it when people don’t pay attention to details.” I snatched a piping hot mushroom and stuffed it in my mouth before I could stick my foot in there instead.

“Did they spell it just like the cracker?” He waited for me to swallow. I made a big show of checking the front of the card and ended up getting some mushroom juice from my fingers on it while I was at it.

“Looks just fine. Now where did I find this? The table is so big, I may not be able to get it back in the right place.”

“It goes over in the corner right next to yours.” Drat. He really did notice all the wrong details. I was going to get my sister back for her tinkering around in my social life. “I came in a little while ago and swapped it with Knowlton’s.” He offered me the platter once more. I couldn’t think of anything to say to that so I took another one and popped it into my mouth. “I figured if he was going around pretending to be your fiancée, a big family occasion like this would only help him delude himself further.” So maybe he didn’t only notice the wrong things. That was exceedingly chivalrous of him. I suppose he could have swapped Knowlton’s name with someone besides his own but I’d let that slide. Maybe he had no idea if there was someone else I was trying to avoid even more than Knowlton. I chewed slowly, trying to craft a response.

Fortunately, the rest of the room began to fill with revelers, and Graham squeezed the platter into an open spot, plucked the card from my fingers, and steered me to the end of the table we were supposed to occupy. I was pleased to note Knowlton sat at a point at the table so far away he couldn’t speak to me even if he did conduct himself like a mead hall reveler.

Grampa said grace, Grandma gave the tour of the menu items, and we were off and running. Graham on the one side of me and Tansey on the other, I felt like maybe I was in a dinnertime version of the pancake breakfast. I like a man who can eat, but as I watched Graham out of the corner of my eye, it was like seeing someone who was starved. And not just on a physical level. He ate steadily but he seemed to be in a bit of a food trance, like he’d never done something quite like this before. I made a note to ask him about his own Thanksgiving traditions when he had slowed down enough that it wouldn’t feel like I was interrupting a man at prayer. Which did beg the point of why he was able to be available to enjoy dinner with us. He obviously didn’t have to be on duty if he was able to eat with someone. Was his family all too far away? I looked around the table at the assembled faces and thought about how conflicted I’d felt about my own family over the last couple of days.

And that’s when I noticed what I would have realized straight off if I hadn’t been so distracted by Graham and where Knowlton ended up. Lowell was nowhere to be seen. With the exception of the year he was in the hospital, for my entire life, Lowell has sat at our Thanksgiving table. And Christmas and Easter, too. He was as much a part of the family as the rest of us. I wasn’t sure who to be mad at, myself or Lowell and my mother for messing everything up. It was upsetting enough to make me lose my appetite right in the middle of the best food day of the year. I was so upset, it took me a minute to notice Tansey herself had switched from eating mode to socializing.

She had finally slowed down enough to speak to Grandma even though she was across the table and Tansey needed a bullhorn to be heard over the din. She managed it, though, even without standing on her chair.

“We missed you the other night at the quilting circle.” Tansey was one of those rare people who could turn her hand to about anything in the physical world and make it come out right. She farmed her fields, tapped her trees, built her own barn, and was a quilt artist. Her work was a source of envy in the quilting circle, and she had been featured in more than one magazine with her original designs. I had been on her about selling her quilting patterns, so many of which featured maple trees, at the sugarhouse shop, but so far she had refused, saying anybody could make up their own and you’d have to be an idiot wasting good money on a thing like that.

“I was sorry to miss it but you know I always help set up for the pancake breakfast,” Grandma said.

“The turnout was pretty good for a holiday week. You and Felicia were the only ones absent.” Tansey slathered a pumpkin roll with enough butter to caulk a tub and bit into it with gusto.

“I’ll be there next time. I’ve got that Christmas table runner I am trying to finish up,” Grandma said. That’s when it hit me. Felicia told me she was at the quilting circle Friday night when the syrup was poisoned. Why would she lie about a thing like that?

• • •

I’d lost my appetite and I needed to think. As soon as I could slip
away unnoticed in the after-dinner cleanup frenzy, I snuck out the door. I was about a mile up an old logging road when I heard rustling in the long grass at the side. I wished I were walking a dog. A dog would be a good way to know if I was imagining things. Dogs are amazing heifer dust detectors. And they seem to love their favorite people anyway. We never had a dog because Celadon was allergic. It was just one of the many things we didn’t see eye to eye on. Ever since the exotics had been let loose in town, I’d wanted a dog worse than any time since I was eleven and pretty sure no one in the world would ever understand me. A dog seemed the only solution at the time. Most days it still seemed the best.

The rustling continued and so did the gentle waggle at the tops of the timothy hay where an unknown was trampling it. I gathered my courage with as much enthusiasm as a child picking up sand toys after too little time spent on the beach. Stepping forward, I sent a silent shout out to the universe detailing how appreciative I would be if the creature involved would not turn out to be a snake. I must have gotten onto a good list with the upstairs management because snakes don’t have four legs and a shell. The leopard tortoise. That didn’t seem so bad. The background of its large shell was colored like maple sugar and the detailing of darker splotches on each knobby segment made it beautiful.

As I bent even closer, it slowly rotated its leathery neck and trained its dark eye on me. It let out a hissing, leaking sound like the air was squeezing out of its body, then it pulled its legs and head inside the handsome shell. Graham had mentioned it the morning of the pancake breakfast. I hadn’t seen any native amphibians or reptiles in weeks so I felt certain this big guy couldn’t be too comfortable. In fact, it was probably surprising he had survived this long.

I squatted behind the creature and tried to wrap my hands around its shell. I confidently gave a heave and felt nothing but the sting of defeat. I looked down in surprise. How much could the thing weigh? I stood and gave it a closer look. The shell looked to be somewhere in the neighborhood of two feet in length. I routinely lifted five-gallon buckets of maple sap as a part of the sugaring process and they weigh around forty pounds each. I hadn’t been able to budge the tortoise more than an inch off the ground so it had to be far heavier. I looked down at the shelled creature and thought about my options.

I could run all the way back, get help, and return, hoping to find this big guy again. I could keep watch over him until someone came looking for me even if it took all night. Or I could figure out some way to carry him back to the house. Since asking for help is even less appealing than sticking myself in the eye with a nut pick and the temperature with the sun still slanting above the horizon was dropping close to freezing, I decided finding a way to transport it was clearly the best option. All those childhood hours wiled away reading adventure and survival books came in handy. I slipped my arms out of my jacket and then put the orange vest back on just in case someone didn’t respect the fact our land was clearly posted. I positioned the bottom edge of the jacket near the tortoise and moved it inch by inch onto the jacket. I puffed and panted my way along until the whole creature sat entirely on the back of the garment. I took a moment to catch my breath then grabbed the end of each sleeve and started dragging the animal slowly out onto the logging road.

The going was slow and the light was fading fast. I felt a shiver of worry when I thought about the other creatures that could be prowling around as the night came on. Primarily mountain lions. Like most cats, they hunt at night, and I was acutely aware that not only did I not have a shell to retreat into, I didn’t even have the meager protection of a jacket.

I had gone about halfway back down the logging road and had repositioned the tortoise on the jacket three times when I started hearing noises. Quiet, crackling twig type noises. Birds being startled up out of the grass and shrubs noises. I stopped and strained my ears, wondering what I would be able to do to protect myself if a mountain lion crouched between the house and me. I had been so eager to leave and now I wondered if bits of my partially digested ponytail would finally provide the coughed-up hairball proof Graham and the rest of Fish and Game would need to prove there really were mountain lions in New Hampshire.

A rustling, crunching ahead of me on the path made me crouch behind the tortoise frozen in place, wondering if I was about to become lion chow. I racked my brain for bits of trivia concerning fending off large cats. All that ran through my mind was a television commercial for superabsorbent kitty litter. My knees went weak when Graham came into view and not in the way a girl hopes when landing her peepers on an available man with a decent job. I hovered in a semisquat above the tortoise, not sure my legs had what it would take to rocket me back up into a standing position. I was saved from decision making by Graham dropping to his haunches next to me, giving the tortoise the once-over.

“It’s like you’re an exotics whisperer.” He ran a square, still tanned hand over the bumpy ridges of the creature’s shell, tracing the rectangular pattern of dark and light browns with a gentle finger. My knees started to feel a little wobbly again and this time it might have been for reasons other than a shot of adrenaline. Even out in the open air, he smelled like wood smoke and pumpkin pie.

“It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose.”

“It wasn’t a criticism. I appreciate all the help you keep giving me.”

“I’m doing it for the animals and the town.”

“Duly noted. I’ve come to realize it is unwise to make assumptions about you.”

“What kind of assumptions?”

“You’re not entirely what you seem on the surface.”

“You mean crazy? Or a liar?”

“I mean normal.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”