two

Despite her lack of working toes, Benji and I made it to the visitor center without incident. When I walked through the automatic glass doors that led into the building, Tiffin shot across the polished, pine-planked floor and curled up in his dog bed by the hearth. He gave a contented sigh as he rested his chin on his white paws and absorbed the warmth from the crackling fire.

I took a deep breath. The inside of the visitor center smelled like a combination of the fire, pancakes, and maple syrup. The school children who were coming to the Farm would be treated to pancakes, just like our guests would be during the festival.

Benji headed to the kitchen to check that Alice, our head cook, had everything under control for the children’s lunch.

Yesterday, the first day of the program, we’d hosted a group of fifteen homeschoolers. We had a few minor maple syrup spills on the dining room floor, but other than that, the day had been a great success. Tomorrow would be the third and final day of the school program, coinciding with the kick-off of the festival.

Because we didn’t yet have any maple sugar of our own to turn into syrup, we’d purchased some from a farm in Kentucky, where the sugaring season was already in full swing. I wished that we had our own sugar for the demonstrations, but we carried on with the Kentucky maple sugar because I believed it was important for the kids to see how the syrup was made. I’d sold the program to the local schools not only on the historical aspect the Farm always offered, but on the science too. Temperature control, evaporation, crystallization, and all of those scientific concepts were included in the creation of maple syrup.

As my director of education, Gavin Elliot was great with the kids, probably because he was much like a kid himself. It had been his idea to create the school program as a companion event to the Maple Sugar Festival. I was grateful to see that his idea seemed to be paying off.

Gavin was only a couple of years out of college and constantly being asked by guests what high school he went to. In protest against being mistaken for seventeen, he’d grown a full, dark beard not unlike Beeson’s. Now, instead of just looking like a teenager, he looked like a teenager dressed up like a lumberjack for Halloween. He finished the look with a red flannel shirt over his Farm polo and khaki pants.

“Is the sugarhouse ready for the kids?” I asked him.

He glanced over at me. “Hey, Kelsey. The sugarhouse is good to go. I’ve had the fire going for a couple of hours already and have the batch of maple sugar boiling at the right temperature.”

I glanced back through the window. The sugarhouse was an old, whitewashed building, a reconstruction of the sugarhouse the Bartons built on the same spot in 1820. The original building had burned to the ground sometime during the Great Depression.

Smoke rolled out of the sugarhouse’s chimney. I hoped to have time to peek inside soon and see Gavin’s presentation with the kids, but first I had to find Beeson. “Did Dr. Beeson come in here?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen him.” Gavin frowned. “I don’t know why you picked him as the replacement. I could have done it. I’m the one talking to the kids for the maple sugar program, and the lecture isn’t that different. My father taps more trees than anyone else in New Hartford. I’ve been maple sugaring since I was a kid.”

“I know you could have taught it, Gavin, but I didn’t want to give you too heavy of a workload. Plus, you’ll have a school visit at the same time. Between you and me, though, I’m starting to regret asking Beeson to speak. I thought his new book would be a draw for more guests, but he’s turning out to be a bit of a diva.”

Gavin barked a laugh. “I could have told you that.”

Before I could ask him what he meant by that comment, Judy, who was in charge of our ticket sales, walked over to where we were standing. “I just got a call from one of the schoolteachers. The buses left the elementary school. They should be here inside ten minutes.”

I nodded. It didn’t take more than ten minutes to drive anywhere in New Hartford.

“I’d better go check the sugarhouse before they arrive,” Gavin said, turning to go.

After he exited the visitor center, I asked Judy, “Have you seen Dr. Beeson? He left Benji and me in the maple grove. I expected to find him in here waiting for us. We were going to discuss the class he’s teaching tomorrow.”

Judy wrung her hands. Before she could answer, Benji approached us from the kitchen. “Alice is good to go,” she said.

“Great,” I said.

Benji looked from Judy to me and back again. “What’s going on?” She stared at Judy’s clasped hands and her eyes widened. Judy wasn’t the hand-wringing type.

Judy looked down at her hands as if she’d just realized what she was doing. She dropped them to her sides. “Pansy Hooper was just here.”

I groaned. “What did she want?”

Judy shook her head. “To complain about all the noise on the Farm.”

“Noise?” I asked, even though this came as no surprise.

Pansy Hooper was our closest neighbor to the Farm. Her family owned a little home in the woods about a half mile from the Farm’s historical village. Milton Hooper, her father, had lived in that house for decades and never complained about anything. After he died, Pansy and her two teenaged sons had moved into the family home. Since arriving in January, Pansy has done nothing but complain about the Farm. She’d gone as far as to report our noise to the town council. They were shaping up to be the neighbors from hell, something I didn’t think I’d have to deal with at Barton Farm. The worst part was, it was the off-season for Barton Farm and she already thought we were too loud. Heaven knew what she would say or do when we started shooting off cannons during the Civil War reenactment in the summer.

I shook my head. “I’ll deal with her later. I have to find Dr. Beeson.”

Judy wrinkled her nose. Apparently, she was as much a fan of Beeson as Benji was.

“Have you seen Dr. Beeson?” I repeated my original question, looking around the visitor center at the polished floors and exposed wooden beams. Although the center was built to resemble a lodge from nineteenth-century pioneer days in Cuyahoga Valley, it was very much a modern building constructed fifteen years ago. Its Wi-Fi and sliding glass doors gave it away. “I thought he was coming back here to the visitor center.”

“He did come in, but he was only here for a few minutes before he stormed off again, mumbling something about the red maples on the other side of the pasture,” Judy said.

In unison, the three of us turned around and stared through the sliding glass doors. We could see the wide pasture lands that bordered the woods along the northern edge of Barton Farm. On this side of the Farm, west of Maple Grove Lane, we had my cottage, the sugar maple groves, the visitor center, the pasture for the oxen, and a handful of outbuildings. On the east side of the Farm was the village, where from May to October my first-person historical interpreters acted out nineteenth-century history as if they were living in 1863. I’d arranged to have a few of my top interpreters—including my best friend Laura Fellow, a high school history teacher—on the grounds near the visitor center Saturday and Sunday, dressed in character for the Maple Sugar Festival. Meanwhile, Gavin would be in the sugarhouse, demonstrating how maple sugar is boiled down to maple syrup, and the Civil War reenactors would be on hand to provide their stories about maple sugar during the war to anyone who asked.

“Beeson must have been moving pretty fast if we didn’t see him when we walked back here,” Benji said. “We were only a few minutes behind him, and I didn’t see anyone crossing the field. Did you, Kelsey?”

I shook my head. “Did he say what was so important about the red maples?” I asked Judy.

She brushed her hands on her long khaki skirt. Judy always wore a khaki skirt. I imagined she had an entire closet of them at home.

“He muttered something about the trees being ready,” she said.

I frowned. “I guess that’s possible. Dr. Beeson was furious that all our sugar maples are frozen solid, so it sounds to me like he thinks the red maples will be ready to tap. He’s adamant on the point that he wants to tap a tree that’s already running for his class.” I frowned. “But those red maples won’t do. They’re quite a hike from the Visitor Center, and most of the people attending his class are retirees.”

“I told you electric blankets will solve everything,” Benji said.

“Electric blankets?” Judy asked.

“Ignore her,” I said.

“Not to mention that the oxen wouldn’t like people tramping back and forth across their pasture,” Benji said. “The only person they tolerate is Barn Boy.”

“Please call our farmhand Jason,” I said automatically.

“I’ll try to remember,” Benji said. Her tone told me that she would soon forget that promise.

“Should we go after him?” Judy asked.

“You can’t,” I said. “You need to stay here for when the school children arrive. Benji and I will go. We shouldn’t be gone long.”

Judy gave me a “yeah right” look.

I frowned and wondered what that was about, but I didn’t have time to ask. I needed to be back at the visitor center in time for the school visit.

Benji pulled her hat down over her ears. “Let’s get this over with, and just an FYI, I might put in for hazard pay. I’ve already lost my toes. My fingers may be next.”

I rolled my eyes, knowing that she was kidding. Before Benji was my permanent assistant, she was the Farm’s brickmaker. If there was any reason to put in for hazard pay it would be that. Making bricks by hand was hot and dangerous work, and Benji had the scars from wasp stings on the soles of her feet to prove it.

Benji and I walked out the sliding glass doors. I looked down at Dr. Beeson’s obvious tracks in the snow. “At least the snow is good for something. He’ll be easy to find.”

Before crossing the pebbled path, we waited for the horse-drawn sleigh to come to a halt in front of the visitor center. It would give the children sleigh rides after the maple sugaring presentation. Since the ground was still frozen, we’d kept the sleigh out, but Jason, the farmhand, had our large wagon ready to go if the ground started to thaw. The Farm’s two draft horses, Scarlett the mare and Rhett the gelding, stood at the front of the sleigh stomping their hooves. Scarlett bumped her head against Rhett. She was the one in charge and everyone knew it.

My master gardener, Shepley, sat in the sleigh’s driver seat. Shepley was the resident grouch of Barton Farm—a title I would have assigned to Dr. Beeson, if only by a few points, had Beeson been a full-time employee. Despite the cold, Shepley wasn’t wearing a hat. His long gray hair was tied back at the nape of his neck with a piece of leather. He wasn’t my first choice to entertain children—actually, to entertain anyone—but he was the one person available. I’d hoped that Jason would step up and drive the sleigh, but he became anxious in a group of more than two people. Four dozen kids would make him run for the woods.

I stepped up to the sleigh. “Shepley, did you see Dr. Beeson walk by here on his way across the pasture? He’s the maple sugar expert teaching tomorrow’s class,” I added for clarity.

Shepley scowled in return. “Did you lose him? I do almost everything on this Farm, but is it my job to keep track of your experts too?”

I sighed, not bothering to argue. There was no point in getting Shepley riled up before he faced all those impressionable children. I shivered to think what he would say. I went over to Benji, who was waiting for me at the split-rail fence that surrounded the pasture.

“Just ignore him,” she said reasonably. She grunted as she climbed over the fence. I followed. The Farm’s two oxen, Betty and Mags, stared at us as we trudged across their pasture in the snow. Steam puffed out of their nostrils and mouths and reminded me of the bison I’d seen in the early morning when I camped in Yellowstone National Park while in college.

“Just so you know, if those two charge you’re in trouble,” Benji said. “I ran track in high school, and I can outrun you.”

I frowned. “Thanks.”

On the other side of the field, Benji and I climbed the fence, but that’s where Beeson’s tracks ended. “Where did his footprints go?” I asked. “It hasn’t snowed in the last twenty minutes, so they can’t be covered.”

She pulled her stocking cap farther down on her ears. “Alien abduction is my theory.”

I studied the ground. “This is weird.”

“What?” She looked down too.

I pointed. “It looks like brush marks in the snow. It’s almost like someone used a pine bough to erase the footprints.”

“Why would anyone do that? There isn’t anything out here but a bunch of trees.”

We followed the brush marks deeper into the trees and found a person lying at the foot of a maple. He wasn’t moving, and some of the snow around him was stained red. A sinking feeling washed over me as Benji and I inched forward. Neither of us said a word.

At our feet, Dr. Conrad Beeson lay on his side, the hand drill sticking out of his chest.