A Welcome Grave (6 page)

Matthew Jefferson lived less than a mile up the road, his home one in a cluster of four log cabins off a circular gravel drive. The mailboxes were bunched
together at the end of the drive, and I didn’t see any numbers on the cabins themselves. I’d gotten out of the truck and was standing in the driveway, looking for a hint to the numbering system, when the door of the largest cabin opened and a gray-haired woman walked out and headed for a Honda parked nearby.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you live here?”

She looked at me warily. “I rent here, yeah. Don’t own it, though.”

“I’m looking for one of your neighbors.”

“Oh.” She smiled and shifted a purse that must have weighed sixty pounds from one shoulder to the other. “Most people that stop by this time of year are trying to buy the place. Doesn’t matter if there’s no For Sale sign, they stop. We just rent, and we still get about ten offers each year.”

“Won’t get one from me. I’m just looking for a guy named Matt Jefferson. You know him?”

“Matt? Sure. He lived in Number Two for a long time.” She pointed at the cabin directly behind me.

“Not anymore, though?”

She shook her head, and I wanted to shake my own, having just made a six-hour drive to check out a dead address.

“You wouldn’t have any idea where he went?”

“Sure. He moved into a little apartment where he works.”

“What does he do?”

“Picks apples.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously?”

She nodded. “Up the road, near Morgantown. Big orchard there, and Matt runs the—what do you call it?—harvesting?”

“Harvesting,” I echoed. “He runs the apple harvesting operation.”

“Uh-huh.”

When last heard from, Matthew Jefferson had been in law school, the son of a prominent and wealthy attorney, his stars appearing perfectly aligned. Now he was running the apple-picking operation in a small Indiana town? That was an interesting detour.

“Can you tell me how to find the orchard?”

She gave me directions, and after the sixth time she said “make another left” I decided I’d better go back to the truck for some paper and a pen.

Even with the written directions, I was almost an hour finding the place. Intersections were spaced out conveniently at about every six miles, so if you
missed a turn, you were a while figuring it out. Fortunately, many of the roads were also lacking signs, so missing a turn was easy. There were no gas stations around, either, so I took comfort in knowing that if I didn’t find the place soon, I’d have to venture ahead on foot. I thrive under pressure.

Eventually, though, I rounded a bend in the road and spotted a hand-painted sign that said:
THE APPLE EMPORIUM—THREE MILES, TURN LEFT
. These people were wise enough not to even bother with a street name, no doubt knowing that the corresponding sign would inevitably be missing. I went three miles, hung a left, and found the orchard.

The main building was a long red barn, the doors slid open to reveal rows of barrels and crates overflowing with apples, a stack of pumpkins on the front porch, everything shaded by tall trees. Overhead, clouds were building, the sun that had been out at the start of my drive now tucked behind a thin veil of gray. I walked down to the barn and through the big open doors. Inside, women were holding apples up to the lights and frowning at them, checking for any slight imperfection. Two teenaged girls were working cash registers at the front of the barn, but the lines were long. Surely, there was a manager or supervisor around. I moved through the rest of the barn, then followed a sign that said
CIDER MILL
and walked outside.

Rows of late-season flowers bordered a stone path that led down to a gazebo overlooking a large pond. Across the pond, the trees spread over the hills, their hues somehow seeming even brighter now that the clouds had gathered. No one else was outside; the whole place was still and private, and I looked down at the gazebo and thought it would probably be a hell of a nice spot to kill an afternoon and a bottle of champagne. Good thing Amy had decided not to come along, or I might have been tempted to do just that.

I walked around the rear of the building, still in search of the cider mill, and as soon as I rounded the corner I ran into a tall metal machine making a soft churning noise. A redheaded woman turned to me, holding a tray of small paper cups filled with a walnut-colored liquid.

“Try a sample.”

“Actually, I’m looking for—”

“Try a sample,” she repeated, and the look in her eye suggested she could arrange to have something bad happen if I refused—have me dipped in caramel and covered with nuts, maybe.

I grabbed a paper cup and took a sip.

“Good, isn’t it?” she said, watching my face.

“My knees almost buckled.”

“Day-fresh,” she said. “Now, what can I help you with?”

“I’m looking for the manager, or owner?”

“I’m both. Kara Ross.” She couldn’t shake hands because of the tray, but she made a little bow with her head. “What can we help you with?”

“I need to speak with one of your employees. His name’s Matt Jefferson.”

“Really?”

“Doesn’t he work here?”

“Oh, yes, he sure does. I just never see any visitors for him. Matt’s a pretty quiet guy. He runs our picking operation.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“He’s actually out working right now. We’ve had to expand to another growing site a few miles down the road. Supply and demand, you know?”

“Can I find Matt at this other growing site?”

“It would be better if you could wait an hour or two. Unless it’s urgent.”

I shook my head. “It’s important, but I can wait. He’ll be coming back here?”

“Yes, he lives here. Follow me.” She walked past the cider mill and into a dim hallway. An old dog was sleeping in the middle of the hallway, but Kara Ross stepped over it as if it didn’t exist, and I followed suit. Back in the barn’s main room, Kara Ross set the tray down on the counter and turned to me.

“I’ll leave a note on the door for Matt if you’d like,” she said. “I’ll be gone when he comes back.”

“When will that be?”

“He’ll work until sunset,” she said. “Come by around, oh, seven. He should be here by then.”

She found a pad of paper shaped like an apple and held her pen poised over it. “What should I write?”

It didn’t seem appropriate for Jefferson to find out his father was dead through a note written on apple-shaped stationery and stuck to his door. Finding out he was a millionaire would be a little better, but, still, I thought I’d just hold off and tell him in person.

“Just write that a man from Cleveland is here to see him,” I said.

“No name?”

“The name wouldn’t mean anything to him,” I said. “It’s family business, but I’m not family.”

She wrote:

Matt—

Man from Cleveland here to see you.
Will return tonight.
Family business
.

“Good?”

I nodded. “Perfect.”

“I’ll leave it on his door. When you come back, this part of the building will be closed. I’ll show you where his apartment is.”

“Great. Thanks for the help.”

“No problem.” She smiled up at me. “You know, we sell that cider you liked so much.”

“Give me ten gallons and a long straw.”

I bought a quart of the cider and a bag of honey crisp apples. A wise tactical move—always keep the locals happy. Then Kara Ross took me around the side of the building again to leave the note on the door to Jefferson’s apartment, which apparently occupied the loft room of the converted barn and looked out on the pond and woods beyond. Not bad.

“Man from Cleveland here . . . family business,” she read aloud and then laughed. “I bet he’ll be intrigued.”

It was an obvious hint that she wanted to know details, but I wasn’t giving them out to anyone but the junior Jefferson. It wouldn’t hurt him to be intrigued for half an hour or so until I showed up.

“Sure that note won’t blow away?” I said.

Kara Ross carefully applied tape all around the apple-shaped piece of stationery, until the wind could no longer work on a free edge. Then she stepped back and looked at it with satisfaction.

“No way he’ll miss it now.”

“Good,” I said. The wind had picked up, stirring dry leaves around our ankles, and I was glad the note wouldn’t end up in the middle of the pond. I wanted to be sure Jefferson’s son would know I was coming for him.

I
drove to Morgantown along a road that embodied autumn the way only a painting or postcard usually will for people who live in the city. Crimson and auburn trees lined cornfields gone weathered and broken, a pale gray sky hanging over it all. The clouds had thickened even in the short time I was at the orchard, spoiling the chance for a nice sunset. The wind was cooler, but no rain fell.

Morgantown was more of what I’d seen in Nashville, only without the obvious design toward tourism. As I sat at one of the two stoplights, waiting for a green light, I thought that if you snapped a black-and-white photograph of the street ahead of me, and captured the stone buildings with their colored awnings and plate glass windows, only the modern cars would clearly separate it from the 1950s. One business sign boasted about handmade furniture; another offered shagbark syrup. It was one of those places that made you glad to be off the beaten path, away from interstate exits with seven chain restaurants and two truck stops.

I killed some time walking around the little town, checking out shops and nodding at passersby, then found a restaurant and wasted forty more minutes on dinner. Dusk settled as I drove back to the orchard, the brilliant shades of the trees fading into muted browns and casting long shadows over the road.
I left the windows down, but the air coming into the cab of the truck was cold enough to make me wish I’d asked for another cup of coffee for the road.

The big barn at the orchard was dark—the doors shut, the parking lot empty except for a few farm vehicles. Floodlights near the parking lot entrance lit up displays made from dried cornstalks, haystacks, and gourds, and a scarecrow hung from a post beside the barn. I parked the truck and rolled the windows up, the windshield fogging immediately as the interior temperature warmed.

Outside, the silence made me pause next to the truck. I live in an apartment beneath which traffic passes at all hours of the night, sometimes with stereos pounding or sirens wailing. A quiet night is one where I can’t hear a woman having an animated cell phone conversation in a convertible or the loud laughter of men coming out of the bar up the street. Here, the only sound was the wind. It didn’t whistle or howl, just offered a quiet, constant rustle though the leaves and over the grass.

I walked up to the barn’s front porch, my shoes slapping off the boards, and then went around the side of the building, the way Kara Ross had taken me earlier in the day. A moon that was about three-quarters full provided the only light on this side of the building. I knew there was a name for that stage of moon, waxing or waning or something, and it had that coppery color it gets only in the fall. I turned the corner and found the door to the loft apartment.

The note was gone, every trace of tape peeled away. I banged my knuckles off the rough wood and waited. Nobody came down to open it, and I didn’t hear anyone move upstairs. I knocked again and got more of the same. There was no knob, just an odd hooked handle and a lock. I tugged on the handle, but the door didn’t open. Jefferson’s son had gotten the note, but he hadn’t waited for me. Maybe he hadn’t been as intrigued as Kara Ross had predicted.

I turned away from the door, shoving my hands into my pockets and tightening my shoulders against the chill night air. Out ahead of me, the black surface of the pond rippled as the wind passed over it. I was watching that when I noticed the figure in the gazebo.

There was no light in the little building, but the silhouette of a man was clear. He was sitting on the bench beneath the fancy trelliswork that passed for walls, as still as the scarecrow that hung in front of the barn. When I saw him, I tensed slightly, a human presence somehow seeming threatening in a spot that was absolutely desolate at night. Then I realized the man had to be Jefferson’s son. If I lived in this place, I’d spend my evenings down by the water, too. The gazebo and the pond were maybe a hundred feet from the rear of the
barn, and I was surprised he hadn’t heard me approach or knock on the door, but maybe the wind had carried the sounds away from him. I set off down the stone path that led to the gazebo, stepping carefully in the darkness.

By the time I was halfway there, I could see he was sitting with his back to the pond, facing me. He must have seen me at the door, and yet he hadn’t said a word, just sat there and watched. I’d planned on calling out a hello before I reached the gazebo, but his behavior was so odd that breaking the silence seemed wrong somehow, and instead of speaking, I just kept walking.

When I reached the gazebo, I went up the three steps and onto the main surface, only a few feet from him. I could see now he was wearing jeans and a heavy flannel shirt; thick dark hair hung over his shoulders and across his forehead, a few strands in his eyes, blending with the shadows. His chin was close to his chest, but his eyes were up, on me. There was a bottle on the rail beside him, some sort of whiskey, not much left in it. I was opening my mouth to say hello when I saw the gun.