Trying to be a good niece, I asked, “Do you need any help?” Since I’d scheduled myself for the noon to close shift at the library that day, I could give her a hand. I had other plans, but if she needed me, of course I’d change them.
“You are a kind soul and thank you, but no. I have some students who volunteered to help if they could walk away with some bird’s-eye of their own.”
It sounded like an excellent plan and I told her so.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Or it will be as long as we can get the door to the storage unit open after that freezing rain.”
“Hot water,” I said promptly. “Take a thermos of hot water and pour it along the door’s seal.”
My aunt stared at me with frank admiration. “Brilliant. I am proud to be related to you.”
“Voice of experience is all. The bookmobile’s garage door sticks sometimes in winter and that works fast. Just make sure to dry off that rubber seal.”
Aunt Frances laughed. “You are a treasure trove of practical knowledge. Do your parents know this about you?” She got up from the kitchen table, having eaten her oatmeal so fast that pouring it might have been slower.
“No one is a prophet in her own home.”
“Is that a quote?”
I thought about it. “Not as far as I know, but then I read a lot.”
“Well, I’m off.” She bagged up her lunch and grabbed an empty thermos. “I’ll get this filled at the school when I’m picking up the kids. See you tonight!”
A few seconds later, the front door shut. “I hope she slowed down enough to put on her boots,” I said to Eddie, who had wandered into the kitchen. “A coat would be good, too, since it’s only twenty degrees out there.”
“Mrr,” he said, jumping onto his chair.
“I’m sure you’re right. She probably slid right into those nice wool-lined duck boots without breaking stride.” I scraped up the last of my oatmeal. “And if you see Otto, could you please tell him this morning wasn’t the right time to talk to her about the furniture?”
“Mrr!”
That hadn’t sounded like agreement, but I could have been wrong. “Cool. Thanks.”
I washed the dishes, patted Eddie on the head, and headed out for my first self-imposed chore of the morning.
• • •
The sign at the road was mostly covered with snow, but enough was visible for my brain to fill in the bottom part. Maple Staples. This was the company that sold the sugar packet I’d found at Rowan’s. Well, technically, Eddie had found it, but I wasn’t about to tell that to my friends in law enforcement. They barely tolerated my ideas; letting them know some of them came from a cat wasn’t going to get Hal or Ash to take the ideas more seriously.
The building was a typical Up North manufacturing facility; large pole barn with metal siding and an office tacked on the front. The parking lot, thankfully, was plowed reasonably well and held half a dozen vehicles. I parked between a four-wheel drive pickup and an all-wheel drive SUV and went in.
“Hello.” From behind a wooden desk worn at the corners, a twenty-something man with long hair and an even longer beard smiled at me. “Can I help you?”
Smiling back, I said, “I certainly hope so,” and went ahead with the truth-stretching story I’d concocted early that morning. With any luck it would sound just as solid now as it had at 3 a.m. “You’re the folks that make that maple-flavored sugar, right? Well, it turns out that stuff is basically addictive and I have this friend who would love me forever if I could track down a case of it. He can’t find it anywhere and . . .” I stopped, because his smile had turned rueful and he was shaking his head.
“Sorry. We sold the last box a month ago to a restaurant in Traverse City.”
“What restaurant?” I asked. “Maybe they still have some and—”
Again the head shake. “Nope. It’s all gone. They called last Friday and asked for more.”
Huh. Maybe the stuff really was addictive. “That’s too bad.” Sort of. I didn’t really care if I bought any; I just wanted to know more about the product and how it might have ended up in Rowan’s house. “It seems very popular. I’m surprised I haven’t seen it before now.”
“We’ve only been in business a couple of years,” the guy said. “My boss and her husband are really into beer, but Bob can’t stand the smell of wort—that’s beer before it ferments—so beer was out when they started thinking about a startup company. But you know how some craft breweries have lots of short runs?”
In a general sort of way. I nodded.
“That’s what we’re doing with our maple syrup. Lots of different products, smaller production quantities. We make things from that sugar to ice cream to a barbecue glaze.” He spread his arms. “And it’s all local.”
“Really?” I’d known Michigan was a big producer of maple syrup, but I’d never thought about added-value products. Yet another reason I was never going to be an entrepreneur.
“And like some craft breweries,” he said, “we’ve decided to relabel products every year. The contents don’t change, but the labeling does. That’s why you might not have seen that sugar packet before—last fall was the only time it was made.”
I hesitated. “Doesn’t that make brand recognition harder for your customers? I mean, what if they really liked that particular flavor of whatever, and think the new label is something different and get, um, maybe irritated?”
“Yeah, we’re getting some of that.” He leaned back in his chair. “I think we should do a longitudinal data analysis and figure out the spikes, both up and down, for correlations and see what we can do to maximize the positives. Don’t you think that makes sense?”
“More data is often useful,” I said, looking for the middle-of-the-road response to what was clearly a very pointed question about a topic. Plus I’d mostly stopped listening when he’d said “longitudinal,” so I wasn’t completely sure what he was talking about.
“Exactly.” He nodded. “That’s what I keep telling Robbie and Bob. You know what? I’m just going to do it. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, right?”
I smiled. “Thanks for your time. I appreciate it.”
“No problem. Say, if you’re interested in the sugar, I can put you on a waiting list. Bob started a sheet right after Christmas.” He rooted through the piles of papers on the desk. “Here you go,” he said, handing me a clipboard. “Robbie wants to expand into birch syrup, too. The sky’s the limit with this place. Of course, we’d have to change the name.”
But for the second time in two minutes, I’d stopped listening. Because at the top of the list of names and e-mail addresses was one I recognized.
Hugh Novak.
• • •
Since I’d estimated the driving time out to Maple Staples and back poorly—to the dry road travel time I’d only added twenty-five percent instead of the fifty percent I should have to properly compensate for the snow that was falling from the heavens—I didn’t have time to make the other stops I’d planned. I arrived at the library a few minutes early, but I hadn’t had lunch, since I’d also planned a return to the boardinghouse to eat.
I stopped in the break room on the way into my office and peeked in the refrigerator. There was always a chance that I’d left something in there and forgotten about it—yogurt? leftovers? anything?—but I came up dry. The offerings in the vending machine were heavy on the sugary side. I made a face at the bag of peanuts I was pretty sure had been there since the machine had been installed and wondered if there was any chance I’d left a can of soup in the bottom drawer of my desk.