We followed the path up the hill. Added ours to dozens of boot prints in the half-frozen muck.
The shack was made of unpainted boards barely maintaining contact. The roof was rusted tin, louvered at the top, curling free of the nails securing it at the bottom.
The shed’s two barnlike doors were thrown wide, and its interior was visible in bright detail. The scene looked surreal, like a movie set lit by an overzealous gaffer. I assumed portable lights had been brought in and set up.
Set up for what?
In a far corner, partly in shadow, two figures stood talking beside a blue plastic barrel. One was Umpie Rodas. The other was a tall woman with a red knit hat pulled low to her brows. A full-length black coat obscured her shape. Both turned at the sound of our footsteps. Rodas was hatless, and his jacket was unzipped. He may have had on the same red shirt he’d worn in Charlotte. Or maybe he had a collection.
“Glad you made it. Sorry about the weather.”
Ryan and I entered. The shack smelled of smoke, moist earth, and something sweet, like a pancake house on a Sunday morning.
I was right about the lights. There were three, the standard tripod variety often used at crime scenes. The generator was gas-powered, the kind you can buy at any Home Depot.
Rodas made introductions. The woman, Cheri Karras, was with the chief ME’s office in Burlington. Instead of mittens, she wore surgical gloves. So did Rodas.
I felt a knot begin to form in my gut.
Behind Karras, a man in a thick padded jacket was snapping photographs. His breath glowed white each time his flash went off.
I took a quick look around. The floor was hard-packed dirt, filled with a hodgepodge of items. Enormous cauldrons, blackened by fire. An open box containing blue plastic bags. Beside it, dozens of identical boxes, unopened. Circling the walls, rusty buckets, saucepans of differing sizes, screens, juice and milk cartons, five-gallon white plastic tubs stacked to form wobbly five-foot towers.
Crude shelving held wooden boxes filled with small metal implements that had a spike at one end and a downspout opposite. Others held metal hooks. Two drills. An assortment of hammers. A half-dozen coils of blue tubing. Jugs of household bleach.
At the shack’s center, directly below the vented part of the roof, was a three-by-five brick-lined pit with iron bars running between the long sides. On the bars sat a rectangular flat-bottomed metal pan, empty, its interior yellowed by some sort of residue. The bricks and bars were fire-blackened and covered with soot. Ditto the outside of the pan.
I was stumped. But one thing was clear. Whatever the shed’s purpose, cobwebs and grime suggested years of disuse.
“—got word no one was occupying the property, I decided to take a look around, be sure vandals weren’t up to mischief. We get squatters sometimes, folks find an empty summer home, decide to move in for the winter.”
My attention refocused. On Rodas. On Karras. On the ominous blue barrel between them.
“House had been breached, all right. Lock was jimmied. That was my green light. No damage inside, nothing worth stealing, so I took a peek out here.”
“Cabane à sucre.” For some reason, Ryan said it in French.
Of course. The shed was a sugar shack, a place to convert maple sap into syrup.
I eyed the barrel. The knot tightened.
Rodas nodded. “A Quebecer would know, eh?”
Karras’s phone buzzed. Wordlessly, she stepped outside. I watched her as Rodas continued talking. She seemed untroubled. A raccoon in the barrel? Or just another day with death?
“The property’s deeded to Margaux and Martin Corneau. Ten acres, eight of ’em mixed red and sugar maple. Until the late ’80s, the Corneaus ran a small operation, provided ten, twenty gallons a year to an outfit that bottled and sold locally.” Rodas arced an arm at the paraphernalia around us. “The old stuff’s theirs, cauldrons, aluminum buckets and lids. The plastic collection bags and polyethylene tubing, now, that’s something else.”
“Meaning?” Ryan asked.