Лори Касс - Pouncing On Murder

It felt a little Abraham Lincoln–ish, and I wondered if Mr. Lincoln had ever made maple syrup back in his Illinois days. Things like that rarely make the biographies, which was a pity, really, because—

“Who are you?”

I jumped high and whipped around, dropping into a crouch, aiming the only weapon I had—my cell phone in flashlight mode—directly at the intruder.

“Who are you?” I countered, backing toward the corner where the tools stood. The man blocking my exit wasn’t huge, but even an average-sized man was a lot bigger than I was. If I could grab the poker, or even the shovel, I could do him enough damage so I could make my escape. I inched back, reaching behind me with my free hand.

“Felix Stanton,” the man said. “Northern Development.” He reached into his pocket and I grasped a tool. Whatever it was, it had to be better than nothing. “Here’s my card,” he said, holding the flat rectangle in my direction. “Are you a real estate agent? Because I’ve already talked to the family.”

Everything fell into place. I looked back at the tool I’d grabbed. A leaf rake. Well, it might have worked. “Minnie Hamilton,” I said, taking his card. It was made of thick paper stock and was emblazoned with a logo so professional I almost asked him for the name of his graphic designer. Then I shoved the designed-to-impress card into my coat pocket and looked at Felix. Or tried to; the light was so poor that all I was seeing was a silhouette in the doorway. “Let’s go outside.”

“What? Oh, sure.” He walked out and my shoulders released a bit of tension. My brain hadn’t really thought I was under attack, but my tummy had been concerned.

Outside, the sky was still blue and the air still fresh. I’d probably only been in the shack for ten minutes, but time had shifted while I was in there and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a complete change of seasons and different decade.

Felix Stanton looked to be in his early fifties. He was about five foot ten, broad-shouldered, broad-faced, and had a little bit of a paunch. His cloth driver’s hat, a canvas jacket, navy blue pants, and leather hiking boots looked comfortable and expensive. He also looked familiar.

“Do I know you?” he asked. “Because you look familiar.”

“I’m a librarian in Chilson, but I don’t think that’s where I’ve seen you. And I drive the bookmobile, but that’s not it, either.”

He shook his head. “No time to read, these days. I keep meaning to, but you know how it goes.”

I didn’t, actually, but I smiled anyway. We started playing the Up North game of How Do I Know You? and it wasn’t long until I snapped my fingers, which doesn’t work all that well when you’re wearing gloves. “Shomin’s Deli.” The deli had booths with hooks for coats at the ends and I remembered seeing that hat hanging from one of the hooks.

“That’s it.” He nodded. “They have the best Reubens in the county.”

“Swiss cheese and green olives on sourdough for me.”

He winced. “To each his own,” he said, then looked at me speculatively. “So, what’s a librarian doing on Henry Gill’s property on an April morning?”

Now, that was an excellent question, and if I thought a minute, I could probably come up with something he might believe. “Not much,” I said. Lame. So very lame. “Henry used the bookmobile, so I’d gotten to know him the last few months.” Sort of. “He brought me maple syrup and I just kind of wondered what his sugar shack looked like.”

It was still a seriously sad answer, but Felix was actually buying it. “He made a great syrup,” he said, nodding. “That smoked flavor was something special.”

I put my hands back in my coat pockets, and his business card poked into the middle of my palm. “Henry’s heirs are looking to sell the property?”

Felix smiled. “Just looking into the possibilities.”

A light breeze pushed the upper branches of the trees around in small swirls, and I thought about Henry and his father and his grandfather and who knew how many generations back, all harvesting maple sap from these trees. “You’re not thinking about condos, are you?”

“No lake access to this property,” Felix said, but it was a fast answer and even I knew enough about developing to know that just because one parcel didn’t have lake access, it didn’t mean that parcels with lake frontage couldn’t be purchased.

“It’s been nice talking to you, Minnie.” Felix smiled. “Next time we run into each other at Shomin’s, at least we’ll have names to match the faces.” He nodded and headed out, walking back toward the driveway.

I watched him go. While I understood the need for new homes and new developments and understood that growth was prosperity, I also wished that some things didn’t have to change. Wished that some things, at least a few things, could stay the same forever and ever.

More wishes.

But happily, since wishes weren’t and never had been horses, I wouldn’t have to think about where I’d stable mine. Or what I’d feed them. I’d grown up in the city, just as Ash said Detective Inwood had, and I was essentially clueless about what, or how much, a horse ate. And they were big, so they’d probably eat a lot more more than Eddie did.

I shook away the thoughts that wanted to distract me and tried to remember what Adam had said about finding Henry that day. After all, the reason I’d come out here in the first place was to see if I could find something that might point to who’d killed Henry and tried to kill Adam.

What I might find that the police hadn’t found, I didn’t know, but it would have been embarrassing if the answer was right there, lying about, waiting to be found, and no one bothered to pick it up.

Then again, the only things I could see lying on the ground were last year’s leaves, a few blades of grass poking up, and sticks and branches of various sizes.

I kicked halfheartedly at the leaves, sending them flying in short arcs. Nature girl, I was not. I’d been kidding myself if I’d thought I’d find anything out here. I couldn’t tell a maple tree from an oak tree if the leaves weren’t all the way out. Woods were pretty much woods, as far I could tell, and—

“Wood,” I said out loud.

Adam said that Henry had gone out to stack some wood. Which would lead pretty much anyone to think that there was a stack of wood somewhere out here. Which meant I was looking for wood in the woods, and might be sillier than bringing coals to Newcastle, but I had to try.

I trudged around the sugar shack in ever-widening circles, looking for anything close to resembling a pile of wood. I found brush piles that might have been made by Henry or might have fallen into heaps naturally and I found fallen trees that might have dropped to the ground via natural means, but how was I to know for sure? Women who weren’t nature girls had no way of telling.

Still. I had to try, and I would try.

My circling walk grew to a radius so large that I started to lose sight of the shack. The leaves on the short, scrubby trees in the understory were farther out than the treetop version, and I took off my gloves to feel their softness. Spring. In spite of the recent snow and the cold mornings, it really was spring. Daffodils were budding and would soon be in bloom and—

And there was a tidy stack of wood. I walked around all four of its sides, looked at it from various angles, frowned at it, even smiled at it, but the only thing it looked like was a plain old stack of wood.

So much for this brilliant idea. I might as well have—

“Hello. Who are you?”

I jumped high and to my left, away from the large man standing next to a massive tree trunk. And here I’d figured Henry’s place would be empty today. I would have had more solitude if I’d stayed home.