Red Delicious Death (16 page)

“What do
you
think happened to him?” Lauren asked.

“Don’t know. Best I can figure, he might’ve been leaning on the fence and had some kind of fit and pitched over it, then passed out. He was a big guy, wasn’t he?”

“He was,” Meg agreed. And a strong one. But apparently Jake hadn’t noticed, and the police hadn’t shared, the information about the muddy footprint on Sam’s back. She wasn’t about to fill him in. Privileged information—isn’t that what they called it? Which meant mainly that Meg was privileged to form the mental image of an incapacitated Sam being held down in this otherwise peaceful meadow until he died.
Too bad pigs couldn’t testify.

Another thought occurred to her. “Did you touch him at all, make sure he wasn’t still alive?”

“I could tell it was too late—the guy’s face was smack in the mud. I didn’t need to get too close. I just called Art Preston and waited for him to show up.”

So he hadn’t seen the footprint? Meg wondered. “What would the pigs have done? You said they were curious.”

“They probably wandered over and checked him out. He would have been kind of hard to ignore, even if you were a pig. When I got here, they were kind of milling around, upset.”

Seeing the site of Sam’s death for the first time, Meg realized that if someone
had
held Sam down inside the fenced field, then that someone had to be familiar with pigs, or at least not afraid of them. Did that narrow down the list of possible suspects? Didn’t that eliminate Nicky and Brian? They were unfamiliar with farm life. Or, Meg amended, she knew that Nicky was. What about Brian? He’d never said much about where he came from. Were there any other suspects? She refused to believe the farmer standing in front of her could have had anything to do with it. But who did that leave? Half of Granford and beyond, but no one with a known motive. But apparently with some knowledge about pigs—she’d have to think about that.

“Seen enough yet?” Jake asked.

“I’m good,” Lauren said promptly. “You ready to go, Meg?”

“I guess. What else do you raise here, Jake, besides pigs?”

“Not much anymore. Enough vegetables for the family . . .” Small talk took them back to the house. Jake stopped in front of it. “You want some coffee, something to eat? My wife makes a mean cobbler.”

Lauren seemed ready to decline, so Meg stepped in quickly. “That would be lovely, if it’s no trouble.”

“Nope. Besides, she’d be pissed if she missed a chance to meet you, Meg. You’re kind of a local celebrity.”

Meg flinched inwardly, but smiled outwardly. “I’d be happy to meet her.”

An hour later, full of coffee and a cobbler that had lived up to Jake’s billing, Meg and Lauren managed to extricate themselves and head back to Meg’s house.

“And what did we learn from that exercise?” Lauren asked.

Meg checked her tone for sarcasm, and decided that Lauren was serious. “We learned that Jake Kellogg is a nice guy who raises clean and healthy pigs, and that he might be able to supply some for the restaurant. We learned that my reputation precedes me even in the wilder reaches of Granford. And he doesn’t seem to know that Sam was murdered or, at least, not how. You have anything to add?”

“Sure. We know that just about anyone who was ambulatory could have followed Sam and offed him, and there was nobody to see it. And we learned that whoever it was must know something about pigs. I can’t see
me
climbing into a field full of pigs, no matter how mad I was at the guy I was chasing. I’d find some way to do the deed outside the fence, maybe dump him in after.”

“You noticed that, too? So that suggests that the killer was familiar with the layout of Jake’s farm, and knew something about pigs. Which almost has to mean that he’s local. Damn.”

“Exactly.”

“I really hate to go,” Lauren said, leaning against her car, her keys dangling in her hand.

“So don’t,” Meg countered.

Lauren sighed. “I’d better hang on to my job, as long as I have one. But I’m jealous, Meg.”

“Over this? A drafty old house, a barn that would love to fall down, and a batch of trees that I know all too little about?”

“At least you have a place here, people who know you. In Boston, if I died in my apartment, it might be a week until somebody missed me, and the neighbors wouldn’t notice until my corpse started to stink.”

Meg felt a spurt of guilt. How often had she called Lauren, now that they didn’t see each other regularly? Once a month? What kind of friend was she? “I know what you mean, although this place does take some getting used to; everybody knows who you are and what you’re doing from day to day. I’m not going to say it’s better than what you’ve got. I mean, you’ve got so much going on in Boston—movies, plays, music, lectures, restaurants.”

“Yeah, none of which I ever have time to enjoy because I’m working all the time. Besides, you’re going to have a real restaurant soon. And Northampton was terrific. Don’t sell it short, Meg, at least not on my account. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“You can come back whenever you want, as long as you’re willing to pick apples.”

“Fair enough. Okay, I’m leaving now. Really. Thanks, Meg.” In a move that surprised Meg, Lauren grabbed her in a quick hard hug before getting into her car.

Meg watched as Lauren turned her car around and headed out of the driveway, back toward the highway, back toward the big city. It was clear that Lauren wasn’t happy, but Meg wasn’t sure what she could do about it. Was she happy herself? Maybe she was. As she had told Lauren, she was enjoying the challenges that the house and the orchard presented. She was getting used to forming different kinds of relationships with people, and far faster than she would have in the city. Maybe she was too close to see the changes in herself, but Lauren had certainly noticed them.

“She take off?” Bree’s voice startled Meg. She turned to see her leaning on the doorjamb. “I wanted to give you and your friend some space,” Bree continued. “You don’t see her often.”

“No, I don’t. It’s hard to keep in touch, since we’re going in such different directions. It was good to see her, though.”

“She looked kind of frazzled to me,” Bree commented.

“She did. The usual stuff—job worries, man worries. I think she had a good chance to unwind here.” If you didn’t include tagging along on an ad hoc murder inquiry, but then, Lauren had initiated that, hadn’t she? “So what’s up?”

Bree straightened up. “We need to go over how you can tell when your apples are ripe.”

“Already?”

“Yup. It’s been pretty warm lately, and you’ve got some varieties that could be ready to pick within the month, so you should know what you’re looking for.”

“You want to do it now?”

“Why not? The weather’s good. And since other things keep popping up, we’d better cover it when we have the time.”

Meg followed Bree inside, and supplied with iced tea, they sat at the kitchen table. “What do I need to know?” Meg asked.

“We’ve got to inventory your equipment. You know, crates, picking buckets.”

“I thought you said the pickers usually had their own buckets.”

“Sometimes, but it never hurts to have extra. Have I explained how you estimate your crop yield?”

Meg sighed inwardly: yet more things she didn’t know. “Not lately.”

“Okay. You’ve got to factor in the age of your trees, what variety they are, how many you’ve got per acre. Your orchard is low-density, so you should get maybe fifteen to twenty bushels per tree, which comes out to anywhere up to one thousand boxes per acre. Christopher did a rough estimate right after crop set, but we need to do another one, now that we’re past ‘June drop.’ ”

“What’s June drop?”

“Trees always shed some fruit early on, in June. It’s normal, so you don’t try to make any estimates until that’s over.”

“Thanks. You said a thousand boxes per acre? And I’ve got fifteen acres?”

Bree smiled. “Relax. That doesn’t mean you need fifteen thousand boxes. Your picking season runs from August to November, and different trees ripen at different times. And they don’t always bear evenly. You’ve got some biannuals out there, which produce every other year. So you can get by with less than that—you sell one batch of your apples and that frees up boxes for the next batch. You’ll need orchard boxes for the field—ones with handholds so you can pick them up—and you need some bulk bins. If you’re selling to a major producer, they’ll probably want you to use their bins, for uniformity.”

“So why am I building storage units, if I’m selling them as fast as I pick them?”

“It’s a balancing act. There’s almost always a lag time between picking and sale, and you’ve got to figure out when to pick if you know you’re going to hold them for a bit. Too early, the apples can end up sour, tough, starchy; too late and they’re overripe and mealy. Some apples hold better than others, or even improve with storage. When you’re picking, you’ve got a window to work in, from maybe a week to up to three weeks.”

“You’re going to tell me when to pick what, right?”

Bree nodded impatiently. “Of course, but you should know how to tell when your apples are ready.” Bree proceeded to outline several processes for testing ripeness, until Meg’s head started to spin. There were so many individual decisions that required expertise she didn’t have. After a while she reached information overload and held up a hand. “Look, Bree, I admit I know nothing, and I’ll do what you tell me. And this means as much to you as it does to me: if you want to have a job next year, we have to sell a decent crop this year.”

“That’s the plan. I don’t mean to dump all this on you at once, Meg, but you’ve got to be thinking about it, and about who’s buying the apples, because that affects when we pick. Sooner rather than later.”

“I hear you. I need to talk to Christopher again. And if you have any ideas, or hear of anything, let me know. Would it be easiest to just go with a bigger local market chain?”

Bree shrugged. “Probably not an option—your crop’s not big enough to interest them, and your harvest is going to be too spread out, timewise. I’d go after the specialty markets, farmers’ markets, maybe restaurants. If all else fails, you can make the whole mess into cider.”

“I can?”

“Well, no, not you personally, but you can go to one of the local cider houses and they’ll do it.”

Meg laughed. “Let’s just get one harvest in and see how that goes before we pulp it all, okay?”

“Right. Just wanted you to know what was going on.”

“And I appreciate it, and I agree with you—I
should
know all this. Just not all at once. So, on to easier decisions. Any ideas for dinner?”

Meg and Bree were chopping vegetables side by side when the phone rang. Meg dried her hands and answered.

“Meg?” Nicky said in a breathless voice. “You know that Seth wants Brian and me to talk to the selectmen on Tuesday night, sort of semiformally, right? Kind of, meet them and chat, but also give them some details about what we’re planning, the permits that we want for the restaurant, so we look like we know what we’re doing. Could you go over the presentation with us, maybe? I don’t know the people around here, or how’ll they’ll react . . .”

“Sure, I’ll be happy to help.”

“Great! Thank you, Meg. I know you’ve got to be busy, and I really appreciate it. Can you come by tomorrow morning, maybe around ten?”

“I guess so.” And she could tell Nicky about her conversation with Jake Kellogg while she was there.

“Great! See you then!”

When Meg hung up the phone, Bree said, “Let me guess—Nicky?”

“Yes. She wants me to help her review the restaurant plan they’re presenting to the Select Board. You don’t approve?”

Bree snorted. “Those two are so helpless! It’s like, ‘Let’s take Daddy’s money and open a restaurant! We like to cook, right? It should be easy.’ And then they ask everybody else to do the work. They’re setting themselves up for disappointment.”

“You think it won’t work?” Meg sat down again and faced Bree.

“Hey, I think it’s a great idea. I just think they’re naive, is all. They’re asking you to help out, and Seth, and how many other people? They just aren’t prepared for what they’re doing. Look, I took a food services course at UMass, just to see what the markets were like, where crops actually went. A restaurant is a business, you know? It’s not just, ‘Gee, I love to cook, let’s open our own place.’ ”

“I see what you’re saying, and I agree, up to a point. But what’s wrong with asking for help? This is a small town, and we need to work together. And it’s a good way to build relationships with future customers, isn’t it?” Meg wondered briefly if Bree herself was too concerned about being independent and self-sufficient, but she wasn’t about to mention that now.

“Maybe. I don’t know. But you’ve got plenty of your own stuff to do, without babysitting Nicky and Brian.”