One Bad Apple (20 page)

At the door, Meg said, “Seth, I can’t thank you enough for that excursion today. You were right—I needed to clear my head. And look what it got me!”

“Happy to be of service, ma’am. And it does look good there. You have a good eye.”

Meg closed the door behind him and turned to admire her acquisition. It was so unlike her to make a spontaneous decision like that. But the clock had called to her; she had seen it in her mind’s eye, exactly where it was now. No doubt there had been one like it before, in the same place.

Then it struck her: this was the first time she had
added
something to the house. She had spent weeks throwing out unwanted stuff and peeling off later additions, and she still wasn’t anywhere near done. But the clock was the first thing she had brought in—something that she had chosen. It had felt right, and it fit, as she had somehow known it would. Its steady beat echoed reassuringly in the nearly empty space.
Like a heartbeat,
Meg thought suddenly. After so long, the house was coming alive again. Meg smiled to herself, absurdly pleased.

And she had Seth to thank for it. Seth seemed to spend a lot of time looking out for other people. His sister. The town. Meg. Unlike Chandler, who had taken care of Chandler first and foremost. And paid the price?

Sunday Meg woke early and remained huddled under her multiple blankets, taking inventory. She could hear the balky furnace rumble to life, and after a few moments a feeble puff of warm air drifted from the heating grate. If she strained her ears, she could just hear the ticking of the clock. The sound of it warmed her.

There was so much she had to do, and yet she didn’t want to move, so she lay still, running through the events of the day before. The detective had as much as said that she was a murder suspect; that meant he thought she was capable of killing a man. She didn’t know whether to feel flattered or horrified.

Seth was also near the top of the detective’s short list, but she couldn’t reconcile the cheerful, friendly, helpful man she knew with the idea of a cold-blooded killer who stuffed his victim into a septic tank. Although, she had to admit, there would be a certain poetic justice to it, if plumber Seth were the killer. Which he was not.

Meg lay still and shut her eyes again. This was not what she wanted to think. Okay, so she had finally purged Chandler and his rejection from her system, which was fine until he ended up dead on her property. But she wasn’t looking for another relationship, and certainly not here and now, when she would be leaving in a few months. And Seth was too nice a guy to use for a brief fling. It wouldn’t be fair to him. If he was interested at all, and she had no reason to believe that. He’d been kind to her, but from what she’d seen, he was kind to everyone. Maybe he just pitied her: poor, clueless Meg, stuck in the drafty old house with no friends. Let’s try to cheer her up.

Meg, you’ve really made a mess of things, haven’t you?
She had jumped into this whole improvement project with little thought and less research. If she had been thinking, she would have known that she didn’t have the manual skills or expertise to do what needed to be done. She wasn’t even sure she could have told someone else to do it and then overseen the project, and she probably would have been exploited in every way possible. Maybe she was depressed—beaten down by the recent blows in her life. So she had simply seized on the opportunity to flee? That didn’t sit well with her vision of herself as a competent, intelligent woman. Of course, the converse would be that she had assumed that she could handle anything she set her mind to, including carpentry, wiring, and wallpapering. That thought made her laugh—surely she wasn’t that deluded? Probably the truth lay somewhere in between.

The numbers still scared her. It seemed that every repair came with a big price tag, and each one somehow led to another repair that had to be done. Since she had never owned a place of her own, she had been unprepared for this peculiar phenomenon of old houses, and her naïveté was proving expensive. But it was too late to turn back now, and she had to cling to the belief that she would recoup all these expenses when she sold the house.

But she still wasn’t sure what impact the Granford Grange project would have on the sale. She hadn’t done any research about Granford before landing here; she had known nothing about the development controversy. Would she have been so willing to come here if she had she known that Chandler was involved? Probably not. It would have been awkward to see him, and she might have stayed away just to avoid that minor unpleasantness. She could have told her mother to hire a team of cleaners to pretty the place up and then sell it, sight unseen. They might have lost a little money on the transaction, but it would have saved Meg a lot of aggravation—particularly the part about being considered a murder suspect.

Self-pity was getting her nowhere. Time to get up and tackle the endless to-do list. Time to get serious. She’d been dabbling so far—starting a lot of things, finishing nothing. At her current pace, she’d have the house ready to sell sometime in the next decade rather than May. She swung her legs out of bed, shivering at the chill. Clothes, coffee, food, then … something she would decide after coffee.

The phone rang from downstairs. Meg debated briefly about ignoring it, but maybe it was the detective with good news. Or Frances, who’d miraculously found a buyer who loved challenges and would take the place as is. She couldn’t afford not to answer. With a muffled curse she grabbed up her clothes and dashed down the stairs.

She picked up on the fifth ring. “ ’Lo?” she puffed.

“Meg, darling, is that you? You sound out of breath. I’m not calling too early, am I?”

Her mother. The last person she wanted to talk to. “No, Mom, I was awake.” She struggled to pull on her jeans while keeping the phone wedged against her ear. “How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been just fine, dear, but I wondered if you had fallen into a black hole?”

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just that there’s been so much to do here, I haven’t had a minute.” Frantically Meg went through a list of things she didn’t want to tell her mother at the moment: house in crappy condition, land threatened by development deal, and, oh yes, dead Chandler. No, her mother did not need to know all this, not until Meg had managed to clear up a few things.

“Well, dear, I’m sure you’re doing a wonderful job. You’ve always been so capable. When do you think you’ll be ready to put the house on the market?”

Meg sighed as quietly as she could. “I’m not really sure, Mom. There’s a lot that needs to be done. I talked to a local Realtor, and she said spring would be a good time. Houses always look better in the spring.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea. How are you enjoying Granford? I seem to remember it was a charming little place. So New England.”

“I don’t think much has changed, Mom. Listen, did you ever have a genealogy for the family? The Realtor said it might be good to know more about the history of the house, and we’re related to the Warrens, right?”

“Distantly. I think my grandmother applied to the Daughters of the American Revolution, and that might explain it. I’ll have to look for the forms she filled out. But isn’t it a lovely house?”

Mom was clearly viewing her memories through rose-colored glasses. “It’s nice, but it does need a lot of work. And you never mentioned the orchard.”

“My word, is that still there? I remember that from when I was a child. It’s lovely in the spring. And I think Aunt Lula gave me some apple butter that she’d made herself. It’s all so long ago.”

As her mother fell silent, presumably lost in her memories, Meg pulled on her sweatshirt and socks. “Was there anything you wanted, Mom?”

“Why, no, dear. Can’t I just call you up to chat? After all, I haven’t heard from you since you took yourself up there. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

Meg braced herself for the question she knew was coming.

“You haven’t heard anything from that lovely Chandler Hale, have you? I was so disappointed when you said you’d broken up.”

Mom had never met Chandler. Chandler didn’t do the “meet the relatives” thing, and now it was a bit too late. Suppressing a panicky giggle, Meg answered, “No, Mom. I told you it was over. And there’s no chance that we’ll get back together.”
Because he’s dead.

“Well, I hope you’re getting out now and then. It’s not good for you to stay cooped up there without any human contact, you know. You were always such a solitary girl.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m meeting lots of new people.” Like the chief of police and the detective. And a nice plumber. Somehow she didn’t think her mother would appreciate hearing about any of them.

“I’m so glad. Well, I’ll let you get back to your chores. And maybe your dad and I could plan a trip up there to see what you’ve done, before you sell.”

“That would be great, Mom. Think about April. Good talking to you, and give my love to Dad. I’ll try not to wait so long to call.”

“Good-bye, darling. Take care.”

“I will.”

With a sigh of relief Meg hung up the phone. No, her mother did not need to know all the details of the past week. Maybe when Chandler’s murder was resolved. Or maybe never.

She was finishing the last of her coffee when she heard a knock at the front door. If she had come here for solitude, Meg reflected as she went to open it, she had sadly misjudged the neighborhood.

When she finally wrenched the door open, she was surprised to find Rachel. “Aren’t you busy with guests?” she said. “Oh, sorry, that came out wrong. Come on in! It’s freezing out there.”

“Nobody at the moment, thank goodness. Winter’s usually slow, unless there’s something happening at one of the colleges. I was headed this way anyway—the three of us try to get together and have lunch or dinner with Mom every couple of weeks. And I said to myself, I need to check out the Warren house—it’s been years since I saw it.”

“Any idea if it will ever stop being the Warren house?” Meg asked as she led the way to the kitchen.

“Nope. Probably never. The Warrens spent over two hundred years here, and it’s going to take a while for anyone to replace them in local memory. Around here, everyone knows the Warren house. But, hey, didn’t you say you were related to the Warrens yourself?”

“Yes, but only distantly.”

Rachel nodded approvingly at the kitchen. “Nice. And I hope you’ll keep it simple. I hate all that cutesy country stuff with gingham and ruffles and demented-looking geese.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” Meg laughed. “I haven’t even considered decorating, and most of what’s here is the worst of cheap kitsch. If I ever get around to prettying it up, I’d like to keep it as close to the real thing as I can—with a few modern necessities like electricity and plumbing.”

“Ah, yes, the infamous plumbing. Come on, show me the rest.” Rachel strode toward the stairs as though she owned the place, and Meg had no choice but to follow. Meg tried to see her house through Rachel’s eyes. Left to her own devices, she always saw the flaws, the things that needed to be done. It took an effort for her to step back and look objectively—and to quell the deprecating comments. Her first thought was of honey: golden light, warm polished maple boards. It was very quiet; a few dust motes drifted through the light from the multipaned windows.

In the cold front bedroom, Rachel waved her hand at the side window. “The orchard, right?”

Meg joined her in front of the window. “Yes. Do you know, I didn’t even notice it for weeks? I don’t come into this room very often. But even if I had, I’m not sure I would have recognized it as an orchard. Doesn’t look like much this time of year, does it?”

“Wait until spring,” Rachel replied.

Despite the cold, Rachel insisted on seeing everything, including the somewhat ramshackle connecting el and the barn at the back. “Seth was right, you know. Good structure, nice space, lots of charm and history. And colonial lends itself to modern tastes, I think—clean lines, well-aged wood. Let the building speak for itself, without cluttering it up.”

She was right, Meg realized. “Thanks, Rachel. I’ve had trouble seeing past the dreck.”

Rachel shook her head. “That’s just surface stuff. But this house was built to last. The early Warrens had money—you can tell, because they put in more windows than they had to, and big ones at that. Glass was expensive in those days, so they were making a statement.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that. I never paid much attention to eighteenth-century history, except for the Revolutionary War, the Constitution, all that stuff. I keep forgetting that they lived it here.” That was something she had to process.

“Sorry—I grew up with it, and I forget other people didn’t. But I’d be willing to bet that the Warren who built this place fought in the Revolution. I know our ancestors over the hill did, and so did most of the able-bodied men around here at the time. So now you’re living in a piece of history. Cool, huh?”