Aspen Allegations - A Sutton Massachusetts Mystery



  Aspen Allegations

  A Sutton Massachusetts Mystery

  Lisa Shea

  Copyright © 2013 by Lisa Shea / Minerva Webworks LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Lisa Shea. The image was taken by Lisa and shows Marion’s camp on Lake Singletary.

  Book design by Lisa Shea.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  “FLASHING IN THE DARK”

  Written by Holly Hanson

  Performed by Neptune’s Car / Holly Hanson & Steve Hayes

  Courtesy of Holly Hanson

  © 2012 Wild Braid Music (BMI)

  Visit my website at https://SuttonMass.org

  In 2013, Aspen Allegations earned a Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards.

  First Printing: March 2013

  - 23 -

  Print version ISBN-13 978-0-9855564-2-6

  Kindle version ASIN B00BO0K7ZI

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  Treat each day as a blessing.

  Tell the people you love how much they mean to you.

  Live with your whole heart.

  Lake Singletary

  Sutton, Massachusetts

  Aspen Allegations

  Introduction

  I have lived in Sutton, Massachusetts for over twenty years. I wrote this book a chapter-a-day starting on November 1, 2012 and finishing on November 29, 2012. On each day I went to the location described and made notes of the sights, sounds, aromas, and textures around me. My aim was to allow readers to experience a virtual vacation in the Sutton I know and love.

  I would love to hear your thoughts on the story!

  All author’s proceeds from this series benefit local battered women’s shelters.

  Chapter 1

  What is life?

  It is the flash of a firefly in the night.

  It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.

  It is the little shadow which runs across the grass

  and loses itself in the sunset.

  ~ Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior

  The woods were lovely, dark, and deep. My footfalls on the thick layer of tawny oak leaves made that distinctive crisp-crunch sound that seemed unique in all of nature. The clouds above were soft grey, cottony, a welcome relief from the torrents of Hurricane Sandy which had deluged the east coast two days earlier. Sutton had been lucky. Plum Island, Massachusetts, a mere ninety minutes northeast, had been nearly blown away by eighty-mile-an-hour winds. Here we had seen only a few downed trees, Whitins Pond once again rising over its banks, and the scattering of power outages which seemed to accompany every weather event.

  I breathed in a lungful of the rich autumn air tanged with moss, turkey-tail mushroom, and the redolent muskiness of settling vegetation. Nearly all of the deciduous trees had released their weight for the year, helped along in no small part by the gale-force winds of Tuesday. That left only the pine with its greenery of five-needled bursts and the delicate golden sprawls of witch hazel blossoms scattered along the path.

  It was nice to be outdoors. Two days of being cooped up in my house-slash-home-office had left me eager to stretch my legs. The Sutton Forest was far quieter than Purgatory Chasm this time of year, in no small part because hunting season had begun a few weeks earlier. The bow-and-arrow set were out stalking the white-tailed deer, and they had just been joined by those eager for coyote, weasel, and fox. I wore a bright orange sarong draped over my jacket in deference to my desire to make it through the day unperforated.

  A golden shaft of sunlight streamed across the path, and I smiled at where it highlighted a scattering of what appeared to be small dusty-russet pumpkins. I stooped to pick one up, nudging its segments apart with a thumbnail. A smooth nut stood out within its center. A hickory, perhaps? I would have to look that up later when I returned home. I had finally indulged myself with a smartphone a few years ago when I turned forty, and while I liked to carry it for safety reasons, I preferred to leave it untouched when breathing in the delights of a beautiful day.

  The woods were quiet, and I liked them this way. The Sutton Forest network stretched across the middle of the eight-mile-square town, but it seemed that few of the ten-thousand residents knew of this beautiful wilderness. In comparison, Purgatory Chasm, a short mile away, was usually bustling with a multi-faceted selection of humanity. Rowdy teenage boys, not yet convinced of their ‘vincibility’, dared each other to get closer to the edge of the eighty-foot drop into the crevasse. Cautious parents would climb along its boulder-strewn base, holding the hands of their younger children. Retiree birders would stroll Charley’s loop around its perimeter, ever alert for a glimpse of scarlet tanagers.

  Purgatory Chasm had an exhibit-filled ranger station, a covered gazebo for picnicking, and a playground carefully floored with shock-absorbing rubber.

  Here, though, there was barely a wood sign-board to give one an idea of the lay of the land. The few reservoirs deep in the forest were marked, as well as where the forest proper overlapped with the Whitinsville Water Company property. That was it. Once you headed in here you were on your own. The maze of twisty little passages, all different, were as challenging to navigate as that classic Adventure game where you would be eaten by a grue once your lantern ran out of oil. A person new to the trails would be foolhardy to head in without a GPS or perhaps a pocket full of breadcrumbs.

  In the full warmth of summer I would be alert to spot a few American toads, a scattering of dragonflies, and an attentive swarm of mosquitoes. This first day of November was both better and worse. The mosquitoes had long since departed, but along with them they had taken the amphibians and fluttering creatures that I usually delighted in on my walks. I had been rambling for a full hour now and the most I had heard was the plaintive ank-ank cry of a nuthatch. Maybe it, too, was wondering where the smaller tasty morsels had gone off to.

  Still, with the trees now bare of their leafy cover, there was much to see. The woods were usually dense with foliage, making it hard to peer even a short distance into their depths. Now it was as if a bride had removed her veil and her beauty had been revealed. The edges of a ridge against the grey-blue sky showed a delicate tracery of granite amongst the darker stone. A stand of elderly oaks was stunning, the deep creases of the sand-brown bark rivaling the wise furrows in an aged grandfather’s brow.

  I came around a corner and stopped in surprise. A staggeringly tall oak had apparently succumbed to the storm’s fury and had fallen diagonally across the path. A thick vine traced its way along the length of the tree, adding a beautiful spiraling pattern to the bark. The tree’s crown stretched far into the brush on the left, but on the right the roots had been ripped up and a way was clear around them.

  I moved off the trail to circumvent this interesting new obstacle in life, eyeing the tree. When I’d parked at the trail head there had been two trucks tucked along the roadside. One had been a crimson pick-up truck with no shotgun racks or other indications of hunting, at least that I could see. With luck th
e owner was just out for a walk like I was. The other vehicle had been a white F-150 clearly marked as belonging to the Department of Conservation. If the ranger was in here somewhere, hopefully he’d spotted the tree and was making plans to clear the trail. If I hadn’t run into him by the time I emerged I’d leave him a note on his windshield.

  My foot caught on a hidden root and I stumbled, catching myself against the rough bark of a mature oak. I shook my head, brushing my long, auburn hair back from my eyes. The forest floor was coated with perhaps two inches of oak leaves in tan, chocolate, fawn, and every other shade of brown I could imagine. My usual hunt for mushrooms had been stymied by the dense, natural carpet, and I knew better than to daydream while walking through this hazard.

  My eyes moved up – and then stopped in surprise.

  The elderly man lay on his back as if he had decided to take a mid-day nap during his stroll. His arms were spread, his head relaxing to one side. But his eyes were wide open, staring unfocused at the sky, long past seeing anything. The crimson blossom at his chest was a counterpoint to the dark green jacket he wore. The blood was congealed, the edges dry.

  My hand went into my pocket before I gave it conscious thought, and then I was blowing sharply on the whistle I carried. It was only after a long minute that my mind began to clear from the shock, to give thought to the cell phone I carried in my other pocket. For so many years the whistle had been my first resort, the quickest way to communicate with fellow hikers.

  I was just reaching into my other pocket when there was the whir and crunching of an approaching mountain bike. The ranger rode hard into view along the main trail, pulling to a skidding stop at the fallen tree. He was lean and well-built, perhaps a few years older than me, wearing a bright orange vest over a jacket peppered with foresting patches. His eyes swept me with concern.

  “Are you hurt, miss?” he asked, his gaze sharp and serious as he caught his breath.

  I found I could not speak, could only wave a hand in the direction of the fallen body. The dead man’s hair was a pepper of grey amongst darker brown. He had been handsome, in a rough-hewn older cowboy sort of way, and in good shape for his age. Had he slipped on the leaves and fallen against a cut-off tree? Stiff and spindly stumps could almost seem like punji sticks, those sharp-edged spikes that the Viet-Cong laid as traps for unwary infantrymen.

  The ranger gave a short shake of his head; I realized he could not see into the ravine from his vantage point. He climbed off his bike; his sure stride brought him to my side in seconds. He pulled up suddenly as his eyes caught sight of the body, then he slid down the slope, moving to kneel at the fallen man’s side. He carefully laid a finger against the neck, pausing in silence, but I knew before he dropped his gaze what he would find.

  He had his cell phone to his ear in moments, twisting loose the clasp on his bike helmet, running a hand through his thick, dark brown hair. “Jason here. We have a dead body in Sutton Woods, north of Melissa’s Path. Just by where I reported that downed tree earlier. Get a team in here right away.” He paused for a long moment, listening, his eyes sweeping the forest around him. “No,” he responded shortly. “I think he’s been –”

  There was the shuffling of motion from above; both of us turned suddenly at the noise. A sinewy man stood there in day-glow orange, his wrinkled face speckled with age spots, a visored hunter’s cap covering wisps of silvered hair. His eyes moved between the two of us with bright concern. “I heard the whistle. Is something wrong?”

  In his hands he held a Ruger 10/22 rifle, the matte barrel pointed somewhere up-trail.

  Jason settled into stillness. His eyes remained steady on the older man’s, his lean frame solidifying somehow into a prepared crouch. The hand holding the phone gently eased down toward his hip. “Sir, I need to ask you to place your rifle on the ground and step back.”

  The hunter’s worn brow creased in confusion. “I don’t understand –”

  “Sir,” repeated Jason, a steely note sliding into his request. “Put down the rifle.” His hand was nearly at his hip now.

  The hunter nodded, taking in the patches on Jason’s shoulders, and lowered the rifle into the layer of leaves. When he stepped back, Jason moved with a speed I had not thought possible, putting himself between me and the hunter, taking up the rifle as if it was made of bamboo.

  The hunter looked between us in surprise, and then his eyes drifted further, drawing in the sight below us. His face went white with shock and he staggered down to one knee. “My God! Is he dead?”

  “Have you been shooting today?” asked Jason in response, moving his nose for a moment to the barrel of the gun to sniff for signs of firing.

  “Yes, sure, for coyote,” agreed the hunter, his voice rough. “But I’m careful! I never would’ve shot a person.”

  Jason glanced for a moment back at the fallen man. “He might not have been easy to see,” he pointed out. “Forest green jacket, blue jeans, he could have looked like a shadowy movement.”

  The hunter shook his head fiercely. “Ask anyone,” he stated, his voice becoming firmer. “I call them my Popovich Principles. I look three times before I even put my finger into the trigger guard. I hear too many tales of accidents. I only took three shots today, and each time my target was solid.”

  My throat was dry. “Were you sure of your background each time?”

  He glanced up at me, and his brow creased even further. “I thought … but I’m not sure …”

  Jason looked over to me, nodding. “We will figure that all out soon enough,” he agreed. “In the meantime, miss …”

  “Morgan,” I responded. “Morgan Warren. I live a few miles from here.”

  “Miss Warren,” he echoed, an easing of tension releasing his shoulders. He rested the rifle butt-down on the forest floor. “If you don’t mind, we can all wait here for the police and make sure we get all our facts straight.”

  I settled down cross-legged with my back against an aspen tree, breathing in the scent of juniper, and closed my eyes. After a few minutes a sense of calm resurfaced. The woods drifted toward the peaceful, quiet, eternal sense that it had possessed when I first stepped onto the trail only a short while ago.