Sabrina
“I’m late to meet Nina.” I scooped up a mountain of paper from the library conference table, searching for my phone charger. “What have you got?”
“Depends. On a scale of one to federal indictment, how wild are you feeling today?”
“Meg,” I chastised, straightening.
A child screamed in the background. “He flung a booger at me.”
“The Sugar Moon syrup financials. Weird.” Her fingers tapped against her keyboard aggressively.
“Weird how?” I sank into the chair, resigned to wait.
“Too clean. Too tidy. This is a regional maple syrup manufacturer in Vermont, not the Pentagon. Their cybersecurity should be basic and maintained by some IT goon named Doug who resets the passwords once per quarter.”
That was very specific. Poor Doug.
“But this? Government-level intrusion detection? Encryption? Layered authentication protocols? They spent a lot of money protecting maple syrup spreadsheets.”
A chill ran through my body.
“Not normal.”
“No shit,” I replied, pinching my eyes shut.
Another cry on her end of the phone, followed by Meg’s response of “Are you bleeding?” She was quiet for a few seconds, then, “Then go watch Elmo.”
She sighed, then the clicking started up again.
“Not that it stopped me. Servers were scrubbed eleven months ago. Seventy-two hours after Will’s body was found.”
Curiosity piqued, I sat up straighter. “Scrubbed?”
“Yup. And wait for the fun part. Gaps. Big ones. Directories removed. But they didn’t do a triple scrub of the metadata, so I found it.”
Obviously. “What did you find?”
“Research archives, thousands of files with internal and external environmental testing results, financial transfer records. Documentation of ownership shares being transferred to Arcadian Biotech.”
Motherfucker.
My pulse quickened.
“So then I got curious about Arcadian,” she went on. “Fun fact? They were purchased by a hedge fund company two years ago. Blackbriar Capital.”
My breath caught. “Isn’t that?”
“Yup, the same one that owns Sugar Moon.”
“But that’s an SEC violation.”
“Bingo. It’s all stashed in holding companies, investment portfolios, and the six fund products Blackbriar manages, but it’s there.”
“What does this have to do with Will?” I asked.
“A compressed archive file,” she answered. “One titled project Evergreen Data.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose.
“The file was compressed by user W.Mcmanus two weeks before his death and the subsequent wipe of the system.”
My stomach dropped.
“He sent it?”
“No idea. He could have just downloaded it or saved it. But it was a massive file, so it wasn’t something that would be quick or easy to transfer.”
“Can you recover it?” My hands were shaking. This could be it. This could break all of this open.
“No.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding. Fuck.
“It was displaced.”
Elbow on the table, I rested my head in my hand. “What does that mean?”
“He saved it locally, and then the servers were scrubbed.”
“In English.”
“Physical storage.”
I sat up, heart thudding. “It exists.”
“Potentially. Or it did at one point.” Another crash in the distance.
“Put that glitter away right now,” Meg shouted.
The tiny responding giggles told me a glitter bomb was imminent.
“Something was happening,” she said softly.
I closed my eyes, thinking about Will. The details Nina had shared. He was young, nervous, and trying to build a career and move up in the world after a tough start in it. Probably in over his head but smart enough to know something was off.
“He knew,” I whispered.
“A lot more than we originally thought,” Meg agreed. “And I don’t think this was just financial fraud. The Manitoba data was there. The reports, the lawsuits, the settlement information. Something else called ‘yield degradation modeling.’”
My heart pounded more heavily.
“I’m still trying to figure out where it could be. I’ve already accessed Will’s Gmail account, and the police department has his phone.”
I stared out the window at the snow-covered landscape and exhaled.
“I gotta run,” I said. Nina and Frankie wanted answers. Mind racing to connect all these new data points, I snagged my coat and headed out. “Call me if you find anything else.”
As I trudged through the snow, I couldn’t stop thinking about how, somewhere out there, a physical copy of that data may exist.
The bell over the salon door chimed softly as I stepped inside. The place smelled like vanilla and acetone, and Dua Lipa blared from the speakers. But it was empty save for the Dunne sisters.
Frankie sat in a massaging pedicure chair while Nina carefully put away polish bottles by color.
“I’m technically closed,” she explained. “This way we can talk without worrying about eavesdroppers.” Lip curling, she stared at my hands. “I can’t let you walk out of here looking like that.” She grimaced at my chipped nails and overgrown cuticles.
“That means she’s happy to see you,” Frankie quipped as she scooted forward in her seat.
With a roll of her eyes, Nina went back to fussing with bottles at her station.
Frankie rubbed her hands together. “I like you, but if you’re wasting our time…” She shook her head.
There it was. The real reason I’d asked for this meeting.
“I’ve been looking into things.” I said slowly. “And I want you to know, I’m doing everything thing I can.”
“We all know Caleb didn’t kill Will.” Frankie pushed to her feet. Despite the freezing temperatures, she was once again wearing a tank top, showing off her defined, tattooed arms.
“You know I can’t speak on that,” I said carefully.
She growled at me, but I let it go. I couldn’t blame her.
“I think there are a lot of coincidences,” I went on. “And it’s obvious that the official story is missing a lot of details.”
She sighed, seemingly pacified.
“The trail was cold for three months.”
“Because he didn’t do it,” she told me, her voice rising. “None of this lines up.”
I nodded. “The confession solved the investigation politically. Doesn’t mean it solved it logically.”
She paced to the other side of the salon and back again. “Our brother? He’s a hothead. He’s young and stupid and thinks he’s invincible. But Will was his best friend. They grew up together.”
“Tell me about Will,” I said softly. All I knew was what I’d gotten from reports and files.
“Poor kid.” Nina wrapped my old gels in foil to remove them. “He was dealt a shitty hand from the start.”
“Maple family,” Frankie explained. “Big farm on the north side of town. His great-grandfather founded the local co-op after the war. That was back when everyone boiled their own syrup. They’d store it up on the McManus land.
Had a cold storage barn. Then all the local farmers would get together to negotiate the best rates for sale.
It was a regional reserve system, like they do in Canada. Prosperity for everyone.”
“But the co-op failed in the nineties,” Nina explained.
A signal in my brain pinged. “The co-op failed? How? Maple syrup is in such high demand.”
“Prices tanked, investors pulled out, and companies like Sugar Moon swooped in,” she said. “Cut costs for farmers by buying sap direct and building factories to boil and bottle the syrup. It made it more efficient for the farmers to sell to them.”
“The McManus family lost everything,” Frankie went on. “Will’s grandpa, who he’s named after, shot himself in his truck a year later. Will was only a baby. After that, his dad started running drugs from the Canadian border and ended up in prison.”
“Eventually,” Nina said, “Sugar Moon bought the property.”
Of course they had.
“They don’t use most of it. The trees weren’t maintained.”
“And Will?”
“His dream was to buy it back.” Frankie sighed. “Worked nonstop—deliveries, office work, maintenance, shifts on the floor. Kid did every job there he could to learn the business.”
“And he was going to school,” Nina added. “Working toward his business degree at the community college over in Rutledge. Used to tell Caleb he wouldn’t just rebuild but make it better than before.”
I perused the rack of polish on the wall, the wild rainbow of colors, my brain working to incorporate this information. A good kid with a family tragedy. His determination to rebuild.
“There’s more.” I wasn’t sure how much I could share with them. The investigation records were currently sealed, pending the prosecution. Caleb’s public defender would eventually get copies, but probably heavily redacted. If the police knew how much Meg had found, we’d both be looking at charges.
But I could give them a few breadcrumbs.
“The autopsy report,” I whispered, “doesn’t line up with Caleb’s statement.”
Frankie went still. “What do you mean?”
“In the confession report I read, Caleb said he and Will fought near the old logging cut after midnight.”
“Sounds like Caleb,” Nina mused sardonically. “Always getting into fights.”
Frankie glared at her.
“But lividity patterns suggest the body had been moved hours after death.”
Nina blinked and Frankie stood.
“The medical examiner said that he’d been lying face up for several hours before he was put into the barrel.”
“But Caleb said—” Frankie blurted.
I nodded. “And there were defensive injuries on Will’s hands. Bruising and cuts.”
Nina hung her head. “So there was a fight.”
“Yes,” I said. “But Caleb didn’t describe any injuries he incurred. Do you remember seeing him bruised or cut in the days after Will died?”
They shook their heads.
“Since he was arrested months later, they had to take his word for it. Again, not definitive, but notable.”
Frankie practically vibrated with anger. “He didn’t do it,” she snapped.
“I didn’t say he did,” I replied. “I’m just sharing inconsistencies. And the cell phone tower data on their phones put them in different locations. If Caleb moved the body and put him in the barrel at the Lawrence farm, why was his phone connected to a tower near town for most of the night?”
“Impossible,” Nina said, bent over my nails and painting with precision.
“Not impossible,” I said firmly. “But it is inconsistent.”
Frankie was pacing again, her energy feral. “Someone set him up. I knew it. Nina, I told you.”
“Frankie,” she warned.
“No. Nope.” She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “He’s protecting someone. Or he was forced.”
My chest ached for them. She could be right. She could also be wrong. Grief had a way of taking minor details and turning them into wild hope. I knew all too well how easy it was to fall victim to that kind of mentality.
“Please listen carefully,” I said, looking at Frankie. “Details matter. But this is not enough to prove his innocence.”
Her shoulders fell.
“But there are unanswered questions,” I added. “My advice? Lay low and save your money for a good lawyer. We’re still waiting on the superseding indictment, so we have time. We can keep picking at this and see what we find.”
“But why?” Nina asked, her own eyes misting. “Why would he do that? Confess to the murder of his best friend? None of this make sense.”
There were a million reasons. Fear, shame, loyalty. And some much darker. “I don’t know yet,” I said, “but false confessions under pressure are not exactly rare.”
“And the fire?” Frankie asked, a hint of hope in her eyes.
“It was him,” I said. It was sloppy, emotional, and intentional. Almost as if he wanted to be caught. “I don’t know why he did it, but the evidence is solid.”
She stared at her hands. “He was so scared. And he’d been acting strange for months. He must have felt so trapped.”
My heart broke for her. On the surface, she was this fierce, aggressive beast. But that facade masked the deep love and devotion she had for her siblings.
I believed her. And I wanted to help.
“We’re not stopping,” I assured them. “But given how messy this could get, as well as the money and power involved, you two need to stay quiet publicly.”
Frankie grunted, but I glared, shutting her down.
“No public arguments with the police chief, no more op-eds in the paper.”
“Fine,” she grumbled, her head down.
“We can’t arouse suspicion,” I said. “That’s the fastest way to bury Caleb.”
The room went silent.
Outside, the gray skies cast the entire town in shadows.
The long, drawn-out end of winter was crushing.
But not as crushing as the pressure of all the parts of my life pressing down on me all at once.
The town, TAP, the Maplewood Games proposal, the pregnancy, my relationship—or lack thereof—with Gabe.
And this town—a place I’d come to love, hanging on by the barest of threads.
It all depended on me. I could not fall down this rabbit hole. Maplewood needed me functional and focused.
“Thank you,” Nina said softly. “You’ve already done so much.”
“Not enough yet,” I said, looking at her pretty face, trying to hold all the broken pieces together. “But some things do not add up.”
Frankie’s eyebrows rose. “And eventually, we will figure it all out.”