The Final Tap (7 page)

eleven

I stood there stunned
as the flames ate away at the paper. Had he really just done that?

The room was completely silent, and then someone in the back started to clap. Before I knew it, everyone in the room was clapping, even Gavin and Stroud.

Buckley picked up another copy of the book and made a move as if he was going to toss that one in the fire too. I ran forward and ripped it from his hand. “You can't burn books!”

He looked down at me. “I'm not burning just any book, I'm burning
his
book.”

Stroud smacked his gavel on the table repeatedly. If he wasn't careful he was going to throw out his shoulder from hitting the table so many times. “Please, everyone, can we please calm down. If everyone would take a seat, we can discuss this more calmly.”

Buckley didn't move for a full five seconds, and then he shrugged and sat at one of the tables at the front of the room.

Stroud let out a breath. “Thank you.” He licked his lips. “Kelsey, what can you tell us about Conrad's death?”

I turned around to face the crowd so that I could watch their reactions as I spoke—especially the reaction of Buckley, who was now my prime suspect. In my opinion, anyone who could burn a book was capable of murder. “There's not much to tell. Dr. Beeson was visiting Barton Farm this morning in preparation for the tree tapping class that he was to teach on the Farm tomorrow morning.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Stroud stiffen when I mentioned the class. I waited a beat to see if he would say anything. When he remained silent, I went on. “Beeson went off by himself to check another group of trees and presumably had a heart attack. My assistant and I found him and called 911.”

“So he wasn't murdered?” someone asked.

“The police haven't made a formal announcement,” I said, hoping that Gavin wouldn't share what I told him earlier.

That hope went unanswered, because Gavin stepped forward. “The police say he was murdered, and they think it was me.”

Conversation erupted as the men discussed this latest bit of information.

“That's ridiculous,” Webber said. “My son wouldn't do this.”

I found his denial of Gavin's guilt interesting, especially after the argument they'd had by the sugarhouse just a few hours ago.

“We all know they think it was him,” said a man in the back smugly. He had a short blond ponytail and a goatee.

Gavin's father glowered at him.

The other man seemed unfazed. “And we all know that both you and Gavin have a reason to want Conrad Beeson dead. With him gone, you'll be able to retain your rights to tap the trees in the park.”

Gavin stepped forward. “Were you the one who told the police what I said to him, Daniel?”

Daniel rocked back on his heels.

I was beginning to wonder if the Sap and Spile club should be billed as a fight club. I'd only been there for a half hour and all I'd witnessed so far was a litany of arguments among the members. I supposed that I could cut them some slack, considering their club president had just been killed, but I had a feeling that many of their meetings went like this, murder or no murder.

Daniel glared at me. “Tonight's meeting is a joke. We should have canceled it the moment we heard about Conrad's death. It's gotten so bad that we're even allowing women into our meetings. Oh, how swiftly we have fallen.”

What was it, 1908?

“Now, Daniel,” Buckley said. “Gavin asked Ms. Cambridge to come to shed some light what happened to Conrad. We can make an exception for such an important matter, can't we?”

A
white-haired
man at the front of the room spoke up. “I agree. And I also agree with Ms. Cambridge that burning books is not something we should do. We should return these copies here to Conrad's family, and they'll decide what to do with them.” He shook his head. “It just seems such a shame that Conrad would drop dead like that right after his book was released. He said he's been working on it for years.”

Stroud gripped his gavel so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“Is something wrong, Robert?” Buckley asked.

The smaller man released the gavel as if it caused him pain to do so. “I—I was just thinking of the injustice of what happened to Conrad. It's terrible.” He cleared his throat. “But Daniel's right. I think we should end the meeting early tonight. We're not doing any good here fighting about Conrad and his book.” He smacked his gavel on the tabletop. “Meeting adjourned.”

The men in the room muttered to each other as they shuffled to the door to leave. I watched them go. I'd come to the meeting looking for an alternative suspect to Gavin, and it appeared I had more than I could handle. I wondered if Detective Brandon knew about this group, because she needed to talk to them. I would put Buckley and Daniel at the top of the list.

Stroud walked up to me. “I'm so sorry you had to witness that. As you can imagine, Conrad's death has taken everyone by surprise.”

“I can see that,” I said diplomatically.

He cleared his throat. “I also would like to apologize for my own behavior earlier. I overreacted about Conrad teaching the tree tapping course. That was all.”

I nodded.

“So, if you're still in need of a lecturer for tomorrow morning, I'm happy to do it.”

I sighed. I wasn't really enthused about spending any more time with any of the members of Sap and Spile, but I did need an instructor. “Yes, I would appreciate that,” I said. “The class begins at ten, so if you could arrive around nine thirty, that should be plenty of time for you to set up.”

“I'll do that.” He gathered up his gavel and walked away.

I hadn't realized, when I was talking to Stroud, how quickly the shelter house had cleared out. The only people left now were Gavin, his father, and me.

Webber was breaking up what was left of the fire with a poker and dousing the last ashes with water from a metal bucket. A plume of smoke filled the room. He set the bucket back onto the floor. “I told you not to come. Look what's happened because you didn't listen. We couldn't even have a real meeting.”

“Dad,” Gavin said.

Webber frowned. “Go home. Both of you. I have to do the final check of the building and lock up.”

Gavin and I agreed and walked outside into the cold together. After the door closed behind us, I said, “I need to see where your old sugarhouse is in the park, that you were fighting with Beeson over.”

“Why?” he asked, a slight whine in his voice.

“Because I want to see what the big deal is.” I put on my stocking hat and tucked my long brown braid up into it.

“Can't you take my word for it?”

I shook my head. “I think I need to see it.”

“I have a school visit to lead tomorrow,” he complained.

“I know that, and I have a busy morning planned. We'll go later, in the afternoon, so plan on it.”

Before he could say another word, I climbed into my car and drove back to the Farm.

Ten minutes later, as I opened the door leading into my cottage, I heard the television. Chase sat in the middle of the couch. Tiffin lay on his right side, and Hayden lay curled up under his left arm, asleep. Even Frankie was in the room. True, he was perched on the dining room table looking like he was about to strike, but for Frankie that was very social. My heart did a little
flip-flop
. It was a feeling I hadn't had in a very long time.

Chase placed a finger to his lips and was careful not to disturb my son as he turned off the TV with the remote. Gingerly he slipped out from under Hayden on the couch and gently laid my son's head on a pillow before tiptoeing over to me by the door. “How did your meeting go?” he asked in a whisper. “You're back sooner than I expected.”

“The meeting ended early, but it was fine. Interesting,” I said in the same hushed tones. “I now have more suspects than I know what to do with.”

He raised his eyebrows in question as he shrugged into his coat.

“I'll tell you later. I should get Hayden to bed. He's going to be so tired in the morning, and it's a school night.”

Chase nodded. “He's a great kid. We had a lot of fun. I'd like to hang out with him more, if you're up to it.” He wrapped his scarf around his throat in a practiced move. “I'd like to hang out with you both more.”

“Chase,” I began, but I didn't know what I was going to say, so I stopped.

“Have you reconsidered our date?” he asked.

“Our date? We've never had a date,” I said.

He gave me a sideways grin. “That's what I was hoping you would reconsider.”

Before I could answer, he leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “I'll see you tomorrow, Kelsey.”

I closed the door behind him and told the butterflies doing backflips in my stomach to knock it off.

twelve

The next morning at
seven thirt
y, Hayden and
I stood at the end of Barton Farm's long driveway and watched as the elementary school's lumbering old school bus crested the hill. H
ayd
en jumped in place. He loved school, and I was so grateful for that.

The bus stopped in front of us, and Hayden turned and threw his little arms around my waist, giving me a mighty hug. I hugged him back. I relished every squeeze and felt heartsick when I thought of the day when he would no longer want to hug me in public.

“I love you,” I said. “Have a good day.”

“Love you, Mom,” he said and galloped to the bus door.

The bus driver greeted him by name with a great big smile and waved at me.

I watched as Hayden made his way to the back of the bus and fell into a seat next to one of his classmates. I waved until the bus disappeared. Then I crossed the street into the village.

The village was closed up tight for the winter and wouldn't officially reopen until
mid-May
. However, many of my seasonal workers would return in early April to begin the long process of cleaning and repair needed to make the village ready for another season.

A striking red cardinal bounced on a maple limb beside the pebbled path and cocked its head to look at me, as if asking why I was coming into the village at this time of year. What the cardinal didn't know was that I walked through the village every day, sun, rain, or snow. As the
live-in
director of the Farm, I felt it was my duty to keep an eye on every aspect of it. That included Jason.

As I walked to the
two-hundred
-
year-old
barn just on the other side of the street, the two oxen, Betty and Mags, stared at me from the pen beside the barn. Jason hadn't yet walked them across Maple Grove Lane to the large pasture. In the cold, they were the only two animals tough enough to be outside. I saw that the Farm's milking cow didn't even bother to stick her nose out the open barn door.

“Jason?” I called as I stepped inside the dim barn. I didn't want to startle my farmhand. He could be as skittish as a colt.

There was no answer. I hadn't really expected one. Jason was a
nineteen-year
-old young man of few words.

I found him in the middle of the barn measuring feed into pails. The three sheep baaed when I walked by. I suppose they expected me to feed them. They would have to wait for Jason.

Miss Muffins, the barn's calico cat, jumped onto a hay bale and held out her neck asking to be petted. I gave her a good scratch. “Hey Jason,” I said. “How are the animals today? I know winter can be hard on them, and we've had a bad one this year.”

He didn't look up from his measuring. “Everyone is fine. Some of the sheep had a tough couple days, but they've snapped out of it now that the weather is warming up.”

“Glad to hear it.” I picked up Miss Muffins and cuddled the calico under my chin. How much I wished that Hayden had wanted a cat like her to bring home instead of Frankie the Destroyer. “And how's your trailer?”

“Good.” Jason looked up from the feed pail that he was filling. “I'm grateful to have it.”

Last summer, I'd learned that Jason was sleeping in the barn most nights. He claimed that he wanted to be close to the animals. I'd tried to convince him to move off the grounds, but I continued to find him on Farm property at all hours. After some prying, I learned that he had nowhere else to go. He was a former foster kid with social anxiety who'd put himself through two years of college to earn an associate's degree in animal husbandry, with the plan to work with animals. I was impressed that he'd managed this feat. It seemed that living around other people was something he could not handle, and I didn't have the heart to kick him out on the street.

Finally, I'd taken a little of the money from the trust and bought a small trailer for Jason to live in on the village side of the Farm. The trailer was tucked back into the trees a few hundred yards from the barn, out of the view of the tourists who would visit the village in the summer months. I took his minuscule rent out of his paycheck.

Not all my employees, namely Shepley, were pleased with my decision, but I'd found it was helpful to have another person living on the grounds when I needed help, especially during the winter when no one else was there other than Hayden and me. In fact, Jason had come to my rescue in January when a frozen pipe had burst in the visitor center in the middle of the night.

“Are you planning on coming to the pancake breakfasts this weekend?” I asked.

He gave me a look. Jason hated the crowds. He wouldn't even face them for hot pancakes with maple syrup.

“You're more than welcome to come.” I knew he wouldn't. I sat on the hay bale with Miss Muffins on my lap. “I stopped by because I wondered if you saw all the commotion across the street yesterday.”

“I saw the ambulance,” Jason said as he poured the measured feed into the trough just inside the sheep pen.

I nodded. “The maple sugar expert I hired had an accident in the woods.” I paused. “He died.”

Jason pressed the lid down on the plastic container of feed until it clicked into place. He made no comment. Most of my conversations with him were
one-sided
.

“Did you see anything unusual going on? I mean, before the ambulance and police came?”

He gave me a strange look.

“The thing is, the police say that Beeson was murdered.”

“Murdered,” Jason murmured.

I stroked Miss Muffins' back. I couldn't get the memory out of my head of Beeson trying to tell me something before he died. Part of me—and it was a big part—thought that he'd been trying to tell me who his attackers were. “Did you see anyone on the grounds?” I asked. “What about a hiker who may have been wandering in the woods?”

Jason poured feed into the food trough for the dairy cow and shook his head. “I saw the police, the ambulance, and the school bus come and go. Nothing else. No one walked over to this side of the road. If they did, I would have spotted them. All the trees are bare, and I can see from the barn all the way across the green, and to Shepley's gardens.”

I sighed. It had been a
long-shot
at best that Jason might have seen something. Although he had a clear view of all the happenings on this side of the Farm, he certainly couldn't have seen across the pasture into the cluster of red maples where Dr. Beeson had fallen. “Have you noticed
anything
strange over the last few days, anything at all?”

He started to shake his head, and then stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

He looked down. “I've seen the Hooper boys cutting through the village now and again.”

I frowned, remembering Judy saying that Pansy had stopped by the visitor center yesterday less than an hour before Benji and I had found Beeson in the woods. It seemed like I needed to drop in on my neighbors. It wasn't a social call I looked forward to, so I'd decided to take Benji with me.

“Did the boys do anything other than cut through the village?” I asked.

Jason swallowed. “Not that I saw.”

I couldn't exactly take that as a no, but I didn't want to push my farmhand too far. It had taken me months building trust to convince him to talk to me this much. I didn't want to ruin what I'd achieved.

I noticed his employee radio sitting on the edge of a barn stall. The green light wasn't on. “Your radio isn't on, is it?” I asked him.

“I don't know,” he said, seemingly baffled by my question and by the radio all together.

I stood up and got the radio from the stall door. I turned it on.

“I was trying to save the batteries.” He swallowed.

“Don't worry about the batteries,” I said. “I need to be able to reach you if something comes up. You need to have this on and with you at all times. That was part of our agreement.”

He nodded and clipped the radio to his belt.