Death of a Bad Apple (19 page)

“In fact,” Dillon added, “he was an ex-con.”

Adam looked up, his face even redder than before. He sighed. “It's true. He was in prison for a while. Now can you see why I didn't want anyone to know we were related?”

“What was he in prison for?” Detective Shelton asked.

Adam cleared his throat. “Manslaughter. He accidentally killed a guy in a bar fight over some woman. He didn't mean to, but they sent him to Folsom anyway.”

“But he owned the farm adjacent to yours, didn't he?” Aunt Abby asked. “I think Honey told me that.”

“It's actually my property,” Adam confessed. “Was, anyway. I gave it to him so he could start over, make a good life. What a mistake. I had to hire a bunch of guys to work the place after he started running
around again, drinking and gambling and chasing women. The only reason I helped him was that he was family, and that means something around these parts to most people.”

I was slowly putting one and one together, if not two and two. “So all this time you've been covering for your half brother, working both farms, spending your own money on extra hired help. Then Paula Hayashi comes along and pays you some attention and you think maybe she likes you. And then you catch Nathan flirting with her and . . . and you didn't like that, did you, Adam?”

Adam stood up suddenly, nearly knocking his chair back. He jabbed a finger at me. “You listen here, lady!”

“Hold up,” Jake said, raising a hand.

Detective Shelton stood up next to Adam, no doubt ready to act if needed.

“Hey, my so-called brother went through women like they're candied apples,” Adam spat. “He'd had half the women in this town. I was ashamed of him, but I tolerated him for the sake of my parents and because he needed me and because that's what we Bramleys do. But if you're implying I killed him just because he was flirting with that witch, you're dead wrong.”

Jake looked up at Adam. “Now that he's dead, what happens to the farm?”

If looks could kill, Jake would have been a dead man. Adam stared at him so long I thought he might be having some kind of seizure. Finally he blew out a
breath of air and spun around, this time knocking his chair over. He stomped out of the house, leaving the rest of us staring at the slammed front door.

“Well, that was quite the bombshell,” I said, breaking the silence.

Detective Shelton righted Adam's overturned chair and sat down in his own.

“Nice work, Dillon!” Aunt Abby congratulated her son, and patted him on the back. “He's quite the white hat, you know.”

“White hat?” I said, frowning. “You mean he's a good guy, like in the movies?”

“Mo-om!” Dillon whined. “Don't say that! I'm not any kind of hat—white, black, or gray. That's a stereotype.”

“Black hat? Gray hat?” I repeated, even more confused.

“It's better than calling you a hacker,” Aunt Abby whispered to him, adding a final pat.

“Mom, a hacker isn't necessarily a criminal, you know.” He shot a glance at Detective Shelton.

“Would you two please explain what you're talking about!” I demanded.

Dillon rolled his eyes, then took a deep breath and began speaking to us as if we were school children. “A black hat is just a media term that stands for hackers who break into security systems either to steal information or to insert malware. What they do is usually illegal.”

“Always illegal,” Detective Shelton quietly interjected.

Dillon avoided his gaze. “White hats break in to show companies that their systems are weak.”

“Like you did at the university,” Aunt Abby added.

Dillon glanced nervously at Shelton. “Hey, I paid for doing that, even though I wasn't doing anything wrong. I only used open sources—I didn't hack. Only UC Davis didn't see it that way because I didn't tell them ahead of time.”

Detective Shelton shifted in his seat. We were in a gray—hat—area here and I felt the cop's discomfort.

“So, what's a gray hat, anyway?” I asked. “Someone who breaks in and can't decide to use their power for good or evil?”

“Ha-ha,” Dillon said, not even close to laughing. “A gray hat is someone who may
technically
commit a computer crime, but he doesn't do it for personal gain. That's what I did when I broke into the campus computer. Since I didn't tell them ahead of time that I was
going to do that, they accused me of wanting the information for my own use. But that wasn't true.”

“But it's still illegal,” the detective said, still eying Dillon.

“Technically,”
Dillon reiterated without looking at him.

“So the stuff that you dig up on the Internet, like what you found on Nathan Chapman, or whatever his name is,” I said, “is that white, black, or gray?”

Dillon shrugged again. “Gray, if you want to call it that. What
I'm
trying to do is find out stuff to help Mom's friend who's been accused of a crime. That's why I'm checking out other people—to find out if they're hiding anything that might be suspect.”

“They call that invasion of privacy,” Detective Shelton interjected. “A misdemeanor or a felony, depending . . .”

Dillon groaned. “Not if I use public sources that are available to anyone who cares enough to dig around. If I use the Internet to find out stuff without authorization, then yeah, I guess I'm guilty of invasion of privacy. But like I keep telling you guys, I'm just trying to help Mom's friend by finding out the truth. I'm not disclosing the information to the public.”

“He's right,” Jake said, the attorney in him revealing itself. “Dillon's not using the information for publication, to offend, with malice, or put the person in a false light.” I could just picture him in court, wearing a suit and tie and reciting all that legal lingo. I had a
feeling the female jurists hung on his every word. “But they could still sue you.”

“So sue me,” Dillon countered. “Anyone can sue anybody, these days. You know that. But if it's the truth, they won't win.” He shot a look at the detective.

“All of this is debatable,” the detective said, “but that's not important at the moment.”

“True,” I added. “We've just learned that Nathan Chapman wasn't who he claimed to be and in fact was half brother to Adam Bramley, who was covering for him.”

“And now Nathan's dead,” Aunt Abby said as she rose from the table. “Anyone want more pie or coffee?”

I smiled at her non sequitur. “None for me,” I said, “but if there's more wine . . .”

She nodded and headed for the kitchen.

“So, what do we know?” I asked the others while we waited for Aunt Abby to return. “Did someone find out who Nathan really was and then killed him?”

“That seems unlikely,” the detective said, “unless he threatened them and the killer murdered him to protect him—or her—self.”

I tried coming in from another angle. “All right, then maybe he was murdered because he was planning to sell his property. Maybe his half brother, Adam, killed him when he heard about his brother's plans. After all, he was the one who had the most to lose if Nathan sold the farm. Adam wouldn't inherit it back, assuming he's in Nathan's will.”

“But we still have the murderer of Roman Gold, aka Reuben Gottfried, to ID,” Jake said.

Aunt Abby returned with a tray filled with two coffee cups, two glasses of wine, a cup of tea, and a Red Bull. She set the coffees in front of Detective Shelton's and her own place, then came around the table and handed Jake and me our wine, before giving Dillon the energy drink.

“You know,” Aunt Abby said as she took her place at the table with her tea. “We've learned so much about all these people and yet Honey is still at the sheriff's office and we still don't know who killed those two poor men.” She topped off her summary with a sip of the fragrant hot drink. Was that apple I detected?

I took a swallow of wine and let the cool liquid begin to work its magic on my tense muscles.

“Dillon,” I said after licking my lips. “Would you put on your gray hat again and see if you can find out more about Red Cortland, Honey's friend? It seems odd that he disappeared around the time of Nathan's murder. And while you're at it, check out Crystal and Tiffany, see if they have any secrets that might embarrass them somehow.”

Detective Shelton sighed. “I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that,” he mumbled into his coffee.

Dillon picked up his laptop and soda and headed up the stairs without saying good night.

Aunt Abby yawned. “You two should get to bed,” she said to Jake and me. “Wes and I will wait up for Honey. I'm sure she'll be home soon.”

“I hope so,” I said, but having my doubts. I rose with my wine in hand and turned to Jake. “You coming?”

“Do you mind if I wait to hear from Casey, my lawyer friend?” he said, remaining in his seat. “He should be at the station by now, so I should know something soon.”

“Keep me posted,” I said. But before I reached the stairs, I glimpsed car headlights through the front window and stopped. “Someone's here!”

“Honey!” Aunt Abby got up, rushed to the door, and opened it.

I joined her and peered around to see Sheriff O'Neil's squad car. He opened his car door, lighting up the inside, and stepped out. I strained to see if anyone else was in the car, but the sheriff closed his door, turned, and faced his anxious greeting party.

“Where's Honey?” Aunt Abby asked, her face fallen.

The sheriff shook his head slowly. “Sorry, folks. We're going to have to keep her awhile longer.”

“That's ridiculous!” Aunt Abby peered up at him, confused. “Why? What about her lawyer?” She glanced at Jake.

“He's there, but we've had to formally charge her. She won't be going home until the judge sets bail on Monday.”

“That's absolutely crazy!” Aunt Abby was nearly beside herself. “She didn't do anything!”

“I'm afraid that's not what the evidence says,” Sheriff O'Neil said.

“What evidence?” Aunt Abby asked. “The apple corer? That apple stick? Anyone could have used those things to make her look guilty.”

“Actually there's something else,” the sheriff said.

“What is it?” Aunt Abby demanded. “A smoking gun?”

The sheriff shook his head at my aunt's sarcastic statement. “Remember the seeds we found in her pocket?”

“Yeah, so?” Aunt Abby said. “They were just a bunch of apple seeds. That doesn't make her a murderer.”

Sheriff O'Neil sighed. “Forensics looked at the seeds we found in Nathan Chapman's mouth under a microscope, then did some testing. They matched the seeds in Honey's pocket.” He looked at Aunt Abby and added, gravely, “Both seeds came from Honey's apple orchard.”

•   •   •

“Well, I'm not leaving the inn until Honey is cleared and back here where she belongs,” Aunt Abby said to Sheriff O'Neil after we'd settled back at the dining table and caught him up on Dillon's discovery. I had a feeling this was going to be a long night for all of us—but worse, of course, for Honey.

“You're barking up the wrong apple tree, Sheriff,” Aunt Abby continued, fiddling with her tea bag as she spoke. “You need to take a closer look at Adam Bramley. We just figured out that he had the most to lose.”

“How so?” the sheriff asked, glancing around at us.

“Isn't it obvious?” Aunt Abby said, her eyes flaring. Detective Shelton laid a hand on hers to calm her down. She took a deep breath and started again, counting out each point on her fingers.

“First, Adam could have killed Roman for trying to buy out his half brother. Second, he could have killed Nathan or Ethan or whatever his name is, because he wanted his land back and because he was flirting with Paula. And third, he has a violent temper. We all witnessed it tonight. I think he's your killer.” She rested her case.

I knew she was jumping to conclusions, but her argument made some sense.

“Look, Abby, I understand your concern for your friend—Honey's my friend too—but we don't have enough evidence to arrest Adam Bramley. His fingerprints aren't on the weapons. He's not the one who had apple seeds in his pocket—”

“But he has no
alibi
,” Aunt Abby said, interrupting him. “Like I said, take a closer look. My son did, and he found out all kinds of motives for murder.”

“By the way, where is your son?” the sheriff asked, looking around. “I have some questions for him too. He seems to know a lot about all this. I'd like to know where he's getting his information.”

“From the Internet,” Aunt Abby said, almost defiantly. “It's all there for anyone to find, even you, if you know how to look.”

Detective Shelton shook his head. He knew there was no point in stifling my aunt.

Sheriff O'Neil frowned and started to respond, but
this time I cut him off. We were going nowhere with all this. “I think we're forgetting about Paula Hayashi. She could have killed Roman to hurry up her promotion at Eden Corp. Or maybe that wasn't going to happen because Roman had something on her that would hurt her chances of making CEO. And remember, Roman was right across the hall from Paula, and she had easy access to his room. She could have made it look like Honey murdered him by grabbing the corer from her display case and using it to kill Roman.”

“Still,” the sheriff said, “you've got no proof. And why would she kill Nathan?”

That stopped me. Paula had been flirting with Nathan, it was true. But had he rebuked her and made her mad? Not if he was the player everyone said he was. And even if he had, that was hardly enough motive to kill him. She seemed to move in and out of relationships without a backward glance.

“We're going around in circles,” Jake spoke up. He'd been quiet, like Detective Shelton, but then the two men tended only to speak when they had something to say, unlike my aunt and me. We just tossed out theories left and right.

“Well, to my mind, those circles all lead back to Honey,” Sheriff O'Neil said. “As much as I hate to think of Honey killing those two men, I don't have any other viable suspects. I need solid evidence. And the evidence I have—the apple seeds, for instance—connects her to the crimes.”

Jake's phone rang. He checked the ID, then took the
call. We listened as he talked to the person on the other end.

“Hey, Casey, thanks for calling. Any news? . . . How much? . . . I'll check . . . Want to stay here at the inn tonight? . . . Okay, have a safe trip back. Thanks again, and let me know.”

He was about to hang up when Aunt Abby whispered, “Ask him how Honey's doing.”

“Casey, how's she holding up?” Jake listened, said something, then hung up.

“Well? How is she?” Aunt Abby said.

“He says she's all right, thanks to the sheriff,” Jake said, glancing at Sheriff O'Neil.

Aunt Abby shook her head. “I doubt it, since this is all his fault.”

Detective Shelton took Aunt Abby's arm. “Abby, you know it's not his fault. He's just doing his job. This work is not always pleasant, but I was there with Murph, and believe me, he's doing all he can to make her comfortable during this ordeal.”

“Like what? Spraying for bedbugs and giving her a horsehair blanket? Serving her croutons to go with her ration of tap water?”

“Aunt Abby—” I started to protest.

“No,” Detective Shelton said patiently. He'd obviously handled upset citizens many times and knew how to deal with an indignant Aunt Abby. “Murph brought her pillows and blankets from his own home, ordered takeout from the local pizza parlor, and even served her some of Crystal's sparkling apple cider. And he lent her his iPad so she could stream a movie.”

“Hmmmph,” Aunt Abby grunted, crossing her arms. “Well, like I said, I'm not leaving here until I've done all I can to prove Honey's innocence and get her out of there.” She rose from the table. “I'll see you all in the morning. Breakfast will be at seven. I want to get an early start on finding the murderer. Good night.”