Drizzled With Death (19 page)

“It is the same sort. Since it isn’t a commonly used murder weapon, I’d say that ups the chances considerably.”

“You don’t think Knowlton killed her, do you?”

“Someone killed her, this is the sort of poison that was used, and this building was not locked when we arrived. How many people in town would have known this wouldn’t be locked?”

“A lot probably knew and anyone would have guessed. People just don’t bother with locks on outbuildings, especially not those filled with stuff they’d just as soon see get stolen.”

“Which makes this serious.”

“But there is no saying the poison even belonged to Tansey or Knowlton in the first place. Anyone who knew it was open could have snuck it in here and left it where it would look like it belonged to the Pringles.” I was feeling hot and then cold and all over shaky. If someone like Tansey could kill a person, then probably anyone could. I felt like someone had snatched my rose-colored glasses off my face and stomped on them with steel-toed boots right in front of my stinging eyes.

“We need to call Lowell.”

“I’m not speaking to Lowell.”

“Well, I am, and as soon as I can get a signal, I’m calling him. Stay away from that box, and for God’s sake don’t eat anything you find in here. We’ve got no idea if any of that stuff has gotten spread around.” Graham resumed his lift-and-check dance with his cell phone and I stood in the corner looking out the nearest window. In the distance, with the light fading as fast as it was, it was hard to say for sure but I thought I saw two large birds slipping off through the trees. Graham began to speak in that peculiar telephone call tone people use when talking to those they do not know well. “He says they’ll send someone out right away.”

“Did you ask them to bring snacks?” My body felt like it was experiencing an earthquake the way I was shaking from all the stomach growling.

“It wasn’t the thing most on my mind. Besides, how could you even consider eating with the smell around here?”

“Police officers are always shown on television standing around dropping doughnut crumbs on battered corpses. Should you really be so dainty about a bit of a skunk?”

“Do you believe everything you see on television?”

“Not what I see on the news, but I do have a soft spot for those alien abduction shows.”

“That explains the mountain lion sighting. I bet you like crop circles, too.”

“If my sugaring business goes bust, I may start a new business laying out fake circles in the far pasture. There can be a swift trade in such things.”

“Should I worry your mountain lion sighting was merely crass commercialism at work?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. Because that would count as wasting police time and then I would have to arrest you.” Graham took a step closer, his eyes locked on mine, a slight smile curving his already curvy lips.

“You’d have to catch me first.”

“Are you saying I can’t?”

“Not to burst your bubble, but so far the only things you’ve caught in Sugar Grove are the ones I’ve helped with.” I crossed my arms over my sadly flat chest and wondered what he’d make of that. I felt a little bad reminding him how little he’d gotten done on his own steam, but he was the one who’d mentioned arresting me.

“As a keen observer of animal behavior, I’d say you’re helping me to catch you. Right now, your pupils are slightly dilated and you’re using your arms across your chest pushing things up and showing them off to best advantage.” Graham wiggled his eyebrows at me like an old-time movie bad guy. If I didn’t get out of here soon, I expected to be tied to a train track for not paying my mortgage. All he needed was a mustache to twirl and the image would be complete.

Luckily, the police arrived before I had to think of a response. I never expected to be happy to see Mitch, but for once, I welcomed him with enough enthusiasm to surprise the both of us.

I was in the office at the sugarhouse the next morning trying to
pretend I still had a business to attend to when the call from Myra about the fertilizer came in. After having spent a couple of hours kidding myself it was going to matter what I planned to order to stock the shop, it was a relief to have any sort of distraction.

“Zip. That’s what I got from all my digging around.” Myra exhaled forcefully then coughed. She must have been calling me during a smoke break. I imagined her leaning her stretch pants covered backside against the peeling clapboards of the old wooden police station, flicking ash close enough to worry the fire department.

“No one knows anything. How can that be?” I was astonished. Myra never failed to turn up the dirt on anything she set her mind to finding. She was like a human truffle pig when it came to delicious nuggets of knowledge. The only way I could imagine her not finding what she was looking for was because it didn’t exist. Or maybe the only people who knew about it had a very compelling reason to keep quiet. But why would anyone want to keep quiet about his or her business? I yakked about mine to everyone in my path. I paid for advertising and conducted free talks anywhere that would have me just to get the word out about Greener Pastures.

“What I’m wondering is if your guy at the state was wrong. Maybe he remembered the name incorrectly. Or maybe he is just messing with you.”

“He wrote the name down when the call came in and read it back to me so I don’t think he got it wrong. And what possible reason would he have to make something like that up? He volunteered the information.”

“Maybe Alanza lied to him when she called. You never knew what that woman was up to or why, but you knew it was to stir up trouble for someone.”

“What could she gain from lying about an unregistered fertilizer business?” It didn’t seem worth her bother.

“I’m going to mention this to Lowell.”

“But I thought you hadn’t discovered anything.”

“Dani, if someone doesn’t want anyone to know they are making or selling fertilizer, what might that mean?” Myra’s voice had taken on a worried note I never associate with her. She is bossy, pushy, brash, and nosy but never worried. My stomach got squishy and my legs felt like the bones had turned into licorice whips as I understood what she was implying.

“Explosives.”

“Exactly.”

• • •

I drove to Tansey’s hoping to hear how things had gone with the
police questioning her and Knowlton about the rat poison in her shed. She was sitting on her porch, her feet in her usual gardening boots, a cat in her lap. Her greeting felt more forced than usual and I can’t say I blamed her.

“How’s Knowlton?” I asked. With Tansey there is no need to bother with the usual niceties. She’s content to get to the point and respects others who do the same. Tansey and small talk mix about as freely as church deacons and biker gangs.

“Tired and upset, no thanks to you and the guy trying to replace him in your affections.” For such a practical woman, she had a blind spot the size of the Atlantic when it came to her son and me.

“Did you want us getting killed by a giant angry bird?”

“How you manage to fit so much bull pucky into such a small package, I will never know.” Tansey stroked the cat harder and harder until the poor thing’s eyes bugged out of its head and it squirmed to the ground in a well-timed act of self-preservation.

“You run into a couple of them as night approaches and then let me know how scary they are. Besides, I didn’t find the rat poison and I didn’t call the police about it either.”

“So you didn’t turn your back coldly on your one true love?”

“I didn’t say anything approaching that. I said I didn’t rat you guys out to the police for having some old chemicals in your shed. For all I knew, they weren’t even yours.”

“They were ours, all right. When the studies came out about how dangerous that stuff was, I stopped using it around the farm. But you know how it is; you plan to get to the hazardous waste day at the dump but something always comes up and you don’t get there. So it has sat, along with all sorts of other junk in the shed, until I finally get around to it. It’s been kicking around so long I didn’t really remember it was there until Lowell came to ask us about it.”

“But Knowlton must have seen it since he spends so much time in that building.”

“Knowlton only has eyes for his mother, animals he might want to stuff, and you Greene girls. Nothing else matters to him. He still doesn’t even notice when his teeth need brushing.” She said that like it was something that would have escaped my attention. Knowlton’s lack of personal grooming was among the chief reasons he was more popular with dead animals than live people.

“Are the police just questioning him or did they arrest him?”

“They asked him questions for about an hour last night and then turned him loose. The poor thing was so upset he didn’t even go out looking for roadkill.” He must have been rattled. Gale force winds, nor’easters, and hailstones the size of biscuits never kept Knowlton from roaming around at night. Which was another reason he hadn’t snagged a girlfriend. Women in New Hampshire like their men to stick around at night if for no other reason than to take the chill off the sheets. Nights are too cold here to spend them all alone. I know from too much experience.

“Did they question you, too?”

“Of course they did. There were enough questions here to have fueled a television game show. They even got around to asking some fool thing about fertilizers.”

“Best Bett All in One?” I asked, thinking Myra had made good on her decision to tell Lowell what she knew.

“That’s the one. Lowell wanted to know if I had ever heard of anyone producing or even buying a product with that name. I told him the same thing I said to Lewis Bett when he asked me about the trust; I was only connected to the Betts by marriage and their business was not really mine.” Tansey crossed one grubby jean-clad leg over the other and stared off into space like she was remembering something.

“Lewis Bett asked you about a trust?” You know that buzzy feeling you get when you are starting to pick up a thread on an idea? I was buzzing like a bunch of wasps had started construction on a paper nest inside my head.

“He did indeed. Several years ago, when he was getting on and feeling his mortality, he asked me if I would serve as a trustee for his estate. He said he liked the way I took care of my own land and he felt I would do a good job helping to protect his.”

“But you refused?”

“I did. The whole thing sounded a lot more complicated than I really wanted to be involved in. Something about a living will and assets and making sure things all stayed like they were even if the people he left the place to wanted to make changes. I told him he ought to talk to someone related by blood, not by marriage, but really it just seemed like about as much fun as pulling burrs off a poodle.”

“So who did he ask?”

“First I suggested Myra but he said she had a big mouth so I suggested Felicia. I didn’t really want to talk about it again in case he had trouble finding someone so I never asked if she said yes. You’d have to ask her.”

Which was exactly what I decided to do.

• • •

I caught up with Felicia just outside the post office. Her arms were
full of parcels and I caught one on its way to the pavement. As I helped her load them into the car, I noticed they all were marked with the return address
Grow Right Garden Supply Company
. What was she doing with something like that at this time of year? The ground had frozen up enough that there was no way she was planting perennials or bulbs outside, and it was a bit early for most people to have placed their seed orders. Besides, there would have been enough seeds in the boxes to plant a good-sized Midwestern commercial farm. Roland and Felicia were enthusiastic gardeners, but they only had just so much room around their place and it was mostly planted with low-maintenance trees, shrubs, and flowering groundcovers. Rather than question her about that, though, I decided my priorities lay elsewhere so I took advantage of her gratitude and started in asking about Lewis Bett’s trust fund.

“He did ask me. It’s been a while, though.”

“Did you say yes?”

“I thought about it long and hard. Lewis was a distant relative and a nice old man. But in the end, I turned him down.”

“Why?”

“We had just bought the bed-and-breakfast, and as Roland put it, if we weren’t close enough family to leave the place to, then why were we close enough to be responsible for it? In the end, I agreed with Roland that it was more responsibility than I wanted to take on.”

“Do you know who did?”

“I suggested Connie. She is related in some sort of shirttail way to the Bett family and she used to do a great job with our books so I knew she had more experience with that sort of thing than I did. I suggested she might be an ideal candidate for the job.” Felicia slammed her lid down on her trunk.

“Do you know if she accepted?”

“She did. When Alanza first got to town, Connie introduced me as another member of the family, and when I asked how they had met, Alanza told me Connie was a trustee of the trust fund.”

“Do you think Lewis Bett is rolling over in his grave after what Alanza did to his property?”

“I wondered about that. When all the trouble with Alanza started, I went to Connie and asked her about what the trust covered and if she could stop Alanza.”

“And?”

“She said if I had wanted to be the one to deal with the trust, I should have said yes when Lewis asked me. She told me her hands were tied and she wasn’t about to discuss the terms of something so private with me.”

“I noticed some coolness between the two of you at the pancake breakfast.”

“I told her after Alanza announced her plans to put in the storage facility that I regretted suggesting her to Lewis, and if that was the way she was going to handle things, I would get someone else to do our books.” That couldn’t have been good news for Connie. Roland’s position as the president of the Chamber of Commerce might cause others to reconsider keeping Connie on as their bookkeeper if he fired her. Roland and Felicia were well liked and well respected. I felt like every time I got one question answered, it brought another three or four to mind. Finding out more about trusts seemed like the next step. Fortunately, I knew just who to ask.

• • •

Whenever Loden wasn’t taking long rambles through the sugar bush
or visiting the local library, he could be found in his train room. With a house as large as ours, with as many different people in charge of remodeling over the years, there were always unfortunate outcroppings of bad taste. Loden’s train room took up what the rest of the family considered to be a home unimprovement. Verdant Greene, arguably the looniest of us all, had stuck a leaking little wart of a thing onto the back of the house in 1923. He built the pyramid-shaped structure as a tribute to the discovery of King Tut’s tomb and had covered the entire thing with galvanized tin. It overheated in summer and encouraged frostbite in winter, as he hadn’t wanted anything as utilitarian as windows or a heat source to mar the effect of his creation.

Loden claimed the space as his own almost as soon as he could walk, and rare was the day he was not found in it for at least an hour or two. Personally, I think that might go a long way in explaining why he’s still not married either. I knocked, and upon hearing permission to enter, I tugged open the door and began wriggling through the opening. What met me on the other side of the birth canal of a hallway was not the golden splendor of Tut’s hoard but a wonderment of another sort.

Loden is a model train enthusiast whose dedication to his hobby borders on obsession. What most of the family does with Christmas, he does with trains. He’s handcrafted most of the buildings and the land formations, too. No one can make tiny trees look as realistic as Loden can, and his miniature stone walls are so convincing, I always expect a rock adder to slide out from one of the cracks and hiss at me. In a rare moment of self-revelation, Loden once confided that the hardest part of law school for him was being too busy to work on his models. But for my purposes that day, his law school experience was exactly what I needed. Unfortunately Loden also has a fine set of principles so getting the information from him was going to take a bit of blackmail.

“I thought you weren’t talking to me.”

“You didn’t think you should tell me about Mom and Lowell?”

“No, I didn’t. You reacted exactly like everyone expected. Which is why no one wanted to tell you.”

“Tell me what any of you have gained by keeping this from me.”

“I guess that’s a good question. Looking at it that way, I don’t suppose there was anything improved by that.”

“Well, that’s something, at least. It’s more than anyone else will admit. I’m the bad guy because I loved my father and don’t enjoy my family keeping secrets from me.”

“How can I make it up to you?”

“You can’t.”

“That’s not fair.”