Town in a Maple Madness Page 19

  Apparently, he’d picked up a scent.

  She thought of calling him back, but quickly realized it would be better to follow him. He might be onto something. Perhaps it was just the scent left by a passing squirrel. Or maybe it was something else.

  She’d taken only a few steps when she noticed the footprints. Of course! She should have looked for those right away.

  That’s what Random was following. He must have caught Neil’s scent. Without further hesitation, she continued after the dog.

  As she’d done the previous day, when following a similar trail leading away from a grove of tapped trees, she kept her distance from the footprints, since she didn’t want to add hers to the older ones.

  Again, she saw two distinct sets of prints, but then she stopped. There was a third set, she noticed, and actually a fourth—Random’s paw prints. But she discounted those for the moment. Instead, she focused in on an area where all three sets of prints were fairly distinct.

  Two of them were fairly close together. The third set—the set Random was following—was apart from the others, though paralleling them. Just as she was doing.

  She realized almost immediately what had happened. While driving past collecting sap, Neil must have spotted the tapped trees and stopped the tractor out here. When he investigated, he’d noticed the footprints, just as she had. He’d followed them, just as she was doing, at some distance, skirting them as she was now, trying to figure out what was going on.

  She looked down again at the two sets of footprints that were closer together. Who were these two people, walking side by side in these out-of-the-way woods? Why were they stealing sap from trees? What purpose could they have? And why these trees?

  She bent down to get a closer look. Two sets of prints, two different patterns. One pair of boots showed a pattern of ringed circles on the bottoms, around the heels and balls of the feet, while the other had a blockier design made up of geometric shapes, like trapezoids and parallelograms.

  She tilted her head. She’d seen both those patterns before.

  She reached into her back pocket and took out her phone. In moments, she pulled up the photos of the footprints she’d taken yesterday, out in the woods at Sugar Hill Farm. She focused in on the patterns, the ones shown on the phone and the ones on the ground before her.

  It didn’t take long for her to realize that the prints she saw here matched those she’d spotted yesterday. There was no doubt. She even noticed a prominent nick in the heel of one of the boots, one with the geometric pattern, which seemed to confirm that the same person had been in both places.

  She also noticed that one set of prints she’d seen yesterday was missing here. The ones with the wavy pattern on the bottoms didn’t appear to be in these woods. She’d seen them only at Sugar Hill Farm.

  So what did it all mean?

  She rose, her gaze following the footprints until they disappeared into the trees.

  Yesterday, when she’d seen the footprints in the woods at the Milbrights’ place, she’d assumed they’d been made by Hutch and Ginny. She’d also assumed the larger boots with the blocky patterns on the bottoms belonged to Hutch, and the smaller ones with the wavy design belonged to Ginny. If those assumptions held true, then Hutch had been in these woods, on Neil’s property, sometime over the past few days. Tapping Neil’s trees. The evidence certainly seemed to point to that conclusion.

  But why would he have done such a thing? One possibility struck her right away: It could have been an act of retaliation. Maybe Hutch had tapped Neil’s trees because he thought Neil had tapped his.

  An interesting theory, and it might explain a lot. But did it fit the time frame? In her head she ran back over the events of the past few days. Hutch had discovered the tapped trees on his property yesterday morning—or so he said. She put the timing of his discovery at around eight or nine. Ginny had called her at nine thirty. Her conversation with them at Sugar Hill Farm had taken place at around ten A.M., she recalled. After leaving Sugar Hill Farm yesterday morning, she’d come right over here, to Neil’s place, but he’d been gone.

  So if Hutch had tapped Neil’s trees, he must have done it before she’d talked to him and Ginny yesterday at their place, right? But was that possible? The timeline was murky, she thought, but yes, he could have done it. The Milbright and Crawford farms weren’t that far apart. Assuming that’s what had happened, had he been discovered by Neil? And who had been out here in the woods with him? Who wore the boots with the circles on the bottoms? They weren’t Neil’s. His were a short distance away. So if Hutch had been out here, tapping trees, who had been helping him?

  She shook her head. It was a tangled knot she had yet to unravel.

  While she considered the questions rolling around her mind, she again took photos of both sets of prints using her phone. Then she slipped it back into her pocket and looked around for Random.

  Not surprisingly, he was nowhere to be seen. But she knew which direction he’d been headed. He was following the bootprints toward the back of Neil’s property.

  She looked off in that direction, studying the landscape, and then turned to look back the way she’d come. Where she’d left the Jeep, near Neil’s tractor.

  She debated for only a few moments before she made a decision. It was easier, and quicker, to ride than to walk.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  She had a tricky time guiding the Jeep through the trees and across the woodsy landscape. She had to go off-trail, navigating carefully, making her own way, which she knew was risky. The land was uneven, broken in places, crisscrossed by creeks and spotted with boulders and rock outcroppings. There were still some snowy patches in the more shadowed places under the trees, and plenty of boggy or muddy spots to avoid. But the Jeep’s four-wheel drive, aided by relatively new tires with good tread, had proven itself so far on this rugged terrain, and she had no reason to doubt it now. Besides, she was concerned that if she walked, she’d never catch up to Random. And driving was easier on the knees and ankles than walking. It was, she reasoned, her best option.

  At least her route was a relatively direct one. She just had to follow the trail of footprints, which led in a generally northwestward direction. But that wasn’t always as easy as it sounded. Sometimes she had difficulty seeing the footprints from the driver’s seat, even with the windows rolled down and her head leaned out over the side of the vehicle, so she could scan the ground. And in some places the prints became faint, even disappearing at times. But if she lost the trail for a while, she always managed to pick it up again a little farther on.

  She had to twist and turn the steering wheel a lot, finding her way through the trees, seeking out the higher, firmer patches of land. With the windows rolled down she could listen for any out-of-the-ordinary sounds. But she heard nothing uncommon, not even the sounds of Random barking. If he was out here somewhere, he was staying quiet. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

  She drove for several minutes, until the woods opened up and the trail of footprints ended. At first she thought she was entering a clearing, but then she realized it was a road that cut through the woods. A narrow dirt road—somewhat muddy now, and seldom traveled, by the looks of it.

  And that’s where she found Random.

  He was plunked down in the middle of the road on a fairly dry spot, about thirty feet to her right. His tongue was hanging out and he was panting a bit. His watchful eyes flicked back and forth, though not in a suspicious or wary manner. He was just being observant while he took a break.

  She drove slowly out of the woods, down a short embankment—probably left behind by winter snowplows as they pushed aside the dirt and gravel, along with snow and ice—and turned onto the road in Random’s direction. At her approach, the dog rose to his feet, yawned, stretched in a casual way, and then started toward her, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  She drove a
nother fifteen feet or so before she pulled over to the side of the road, where she came to a stop. She put the Jeep into park and yanked on the emergency brake. With the engine still running, she opened the door and climbed out. She stood for a moment beside the vehicle with her hands in her back pockets, making a quick surveillance of the area as Random approached her. “What are you doing out here?” she asked him. “Something catch your eye? Or your nose?”

  As he reached her, he bent his head to sniff at her feet and circled her once, twice, before angling off again, back the way he’d come, jogging along the side of the road, his nose to the ground, shifting back and forth.

  Apparently, he was still tracking a scent.

  Curious, Candy followed.

  The dog stopped a little farther along, in an area by the side of the road. He again circled a few times before he sat down, facing her. His grayish eyebrows twitched a little, giving him an almost quizzical expression.

  “So what have you found?” she asked. Her gaze dropped and swept the ground around and in front of her. She could see it now—the lines of tire tracks in the softer dirt at the side of the road. Some appeared to have been made by vehicles whose drivers were simply trying to avoid some of the soggier spots on the road. But at least two sets of the tire tracks went up and over the short embankment a little, as if the drivers had pulled their vehicles over to the side of the road to park, just as she had.

  She stopped for a few moments, examining the tracks, then started forward slowly, stepping carefully as she moved out toward the middle of the road. She followed the tire tracks in a parallel line, giving them a wide berth so as not to disturb them, as she’d done previously when coming across potential evidence. Random, who had seated himself near the far end of the tires’ impressions, watched her expectantly as she approached, angling back toward him.

  As she reached him, she scratched him behind the ears and crouched down. “Tire tracks, huh? Two sets of them. And they look fairly fresh, don’t they? A few days old, maybe? Or maybe just a day or two?”

  Both sets of tracks were made by nondescript tires—nothing familiar, nothing she recognized. The treads on one set of tires were fairly worn. They wouldn’t provide much traction. Probably wouldn’t be very good in the winter. The vehicle would tend to slide around a lot. The other set of tires had more tread on them. In fact, they looked like commercial-grade tires, designed for use in mud and snow.

  Like something you might find on a snowplow truck, for instance.

  So, she thought as she rose, what did it mean? Had Mick Rilke been out here in his truck sometime in the past few days? Or was she looking at the tire tracks of a completely unrelated vehicle?

  The other set of tire tracks, she thought, could have been left by any of a hundred or more vehicles. There were a lot of old cars and trucks around the cape, and around the state. There was no way to tell which vehicles had left these tracks.

  The police forensics lab in Augusta could probably figure it out, she thought, by making molds or taking photos of the tracks and running them through some sort of database. But the lab was a long way away, and that would take time—and she was right here.

  “Let’s look around,” she said.

  At her words, Random was back on his feet, tail wagging, and as she started off, examining the ground again in a general search pattern, he trotted along right beside her.

  It didn’t take long to find what she was looking for. The two sets of bootprints she’d followed from the illegally tapped trees emerged from the woods about ten or twelve feet away, to her right, back toward where she’d parked the Jeep. Once they reached the road, the prints separated, one set going one direction, one the other, both paralleling the dirt road. She followed one set that circled back into the woods, and soon came upon an area where some sort of scuffle appeared to have taken place. From there, she saw drag marks leading back toward the road, to the spot Random had found, where the parked vehicles had left their tracks.

  Looking around at the evidence before her, she could guess what might have happened here. Neil had spotted someone—two people, maybe—tapping his trees. The alleged sap thief, or thieves. So he’d followed them. But one of the thieves must have noticed Neil was following them. The sound of the tractor in the woods would have been a dead giveaway. So one of them had circled around and ambushed him in the trees near the road—possibly knocked him out, and dragged him back to one of the vehicles they’d parked by the roadside.

  But then what? Drove him away? To where? The boathouse?

  And what about the second vehicle that had parked here?

  As she’d done before, she took a few photos, just in case she wanted to refer to them later. And before she left the area, she swept it a final time, on the lookout for anything that might have been used as a weapon against Neil, a blunt object like a tree limb or a rock, or something else, perhaps a long steel pipe or rod, or a particular piece of sturdy lumber properly sized. Even an old baseball bat. She spotted a few possible items, just limbs and rocks, but none seemed like an obvious weapon.

  With a final look around, she headed back to the Jeep, where she rummaged around in the backseat for a few moments before she pulled out an old hand towel she kept there for times just like these. She used it to quickly wipe Random’s paws, then laid it flat out on the front passenger seat and motioned him inside. “Come on,” she said, coaxing him. “Up you go.”

  He glanced at her before he looked back up at the seat. After taking a moment to consider his route, he agilely leaped up into the footwell and then onto the seat. He turned in several tight circles, apparently trying to figure out how and where to sit, but he finally plopped himself down.

  She closed the door behind him, leaned in the open side window, and patted him reassuringly on the head. “One more stop,” she said, “and then we’ll go to the hospital to see Neil, okay?”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Even though she’d never driven on this particular road before, something about it seemed familiar—and it didn’t take her long to figure out why.

  She’d had her suspicions the moment she stepped onto it, following Random out of the woods. It was little more than a single lane wide, narrow and muddy, running in a general direction of southwest to northeast. There was no one else on the road with her. She saw no other vehicles. No villagers, no farmers, no tractors, no tourists. Just a forgotten back lane running through undeveloped land.

  She wondered how many people in town even knew about this backwoods road. She was surprised they even bothered to plow it in the winter. But perhaps it was used occasionally as an access road by the town’s maintenance crew, allowing them to get from one point on the cape to another fairly quickly.

  As she drove along with a fair amount of speed, to avoid getting stuck in the muddier spots, her gaze kept shifting back and forth, from side to side, to the exterior mirrors and the inside rearview mirror, on the lookout for anything unusual. She noticed that some of the woods and open spaces on her left were fenced off, and she suspected it was conservation land. This was confirmed a little farther on, when she passed a small, rustic brown sign with plain white lettering stating the land’s designation.

  Neil’s property, she knew, was bordered on its back end by conservation land.

  So was the Milbrights’ farm.

  A little farther along, as she came around one particular bend, she had a strong feeling of déjà vu. The sense of familiarity overwhelmed her. The fence on her left was gone, the open spaces had filled back in with trees and vegetation, and the woods had again closed in on either side. She slowed the Jeep as she looked around. This stretch of the road was about two hundred feet or so in length, with bends in the road at either end, heading in opposite directions. There were mud ruts all along the way. She recognized some of the trees and landmarks. And she thought she could spot the place where she’d come out of the woods the day before, and on the
other side, where she’d fallen when she’d almost been run over by the purple van.

  This was, she knew, the service road behind the Milbrights’ property—the same one where she’d encountered the out-of-control van yesterday; the same one Hutch had mentioned, when he’d told her about the red vehicle he’d spotted through the woods a couple of days ago.

  So, two vehicles had been through here recently. And Random had found two sets of tire tracks over by Neil’s place. Could the tire tracks have been made the same vehicles? An old van with bald tires, perhaps? And an old red snowplow truck with relatively new mud and snow tires?

  If so, where had those vehicles been going? And where were they now?

  She didn’t see them along here—or anything else of interest. She was tempted to stop and snoop around a little, but she was concerned that if she slowed down too much, her tires would sink into the muck, and she’d have a hard time getting them unstuck. So, instead, she gently tapped the gas pedal, urging the Jeep forward a little faster without making the tires dig in too much. Soon she was back up to an appropriate speed for this type of road, following its twists and turns. As she went, she kept her eyes on the road ahead. Random stayed alert as well. He was sitting up now, watching out the windshield and side window as the landscape rolled past. It was almost as if he could sense what was going on.

  She thought the road must terminate soon, since the peninsula wasn’t that wide, only a few miles from coastline to coastline. And, as she expected, it ended not too far ahead.

  As she came around the final curve, she knew why she’d never been aware of this particular dirt service road before. It came to an end on the back side of a parking lot for a maintenance shed belonging to the town’s public works department, as indicated by a black-and-white municipal sign out front. The shed was located in an open field on a short spur of a road just thirty feet or so from the Coastal Loop. Ahead of her, she saw cars whizzing back and forth along the main drag, headed into and out of town.