Sour Apples (22 page)

“Tea? Coffee?” Lydia asked.

“Tea sounds good for a change. Where’s the computer?”

“Let me put the water on to boil and I’ll go get my laptop.”

When Lydia returned, Meg booted up the laptop and began searching. “Okay, here’s Pioneer Valley Construction Management. Nice website. Multiple divisions, including remediation. Privately held…let me see if they list their management team or history…” She clicked through more pages. “No, no corporate information, but let me try something else…” She tapped a few more times and found what she wanted. “Gotcha!”

But when Meg read through the first few pages, she felt a small chill. “Lydia,” she said slowly, “it looks as though the company changed its name in 1997. Before that it was Sainsbury Construction. The CEO at that time was James Sainsbury.”

“Rick’s father,” Lydia said. “Interesting. Is that important?”

“I…don’t know, actually. But think about it. Rick decides he wants to run for office, and then Joyce Truesdell starts complaining about toxic land that his father’s company was supposed to have cleaned up years ago.
That could put a crimp in Rick’s campaign, which is just starting out.”

Lydia looked unconvinced. “But why kill her? Wouldn’t there be easier ways to keep her quiet? Like paying her off? Or buying the land?”

“You’d think so. On the other hand, Joyce used to be a federal inspector, and maybe she felt some responsibility to make this public, if she suspected that the land was still contaminated. Maybe she wasn’t happy with just making it all go away.”

“Possible, but I’m not buying it, not without proof,” Lydia said. “But it might explain why somebody wants to find whatever records there might be. Oh dear.”

“Exactly,” Meg said.

Lydia poured a cup of tea for Meg, then sat down across the table from her. Meg was trying to sort out the implications of this unexpected connection.

“Let’s see if I can put this together,” she began. “Rick’s father used to manage a construction company around here, which morphed into a bigger construction company and changed its name to Pioneer Valley. Your husband worked for them as a subcontractor.”

Lydia interrupted. “Actually he worked for Rick’s father earlier, on and off. I just hadn’t put it together with the Pioneer Valley name. And, as I recall, it was a pretty informal arrangement. Meg, you have to realize that in this situation, James Sainsbury would have been doing Cal a favor, after he got too sick to really work. That’s why I was surprised to find a record of it.”

“Was Seth involved?”

“Not that I recall. He was handling smaller projects, mostly residential. Cal didn’t find it easy to let go of
control, so he didn’t share all the business details with Seth or let him handle any of the bigger jobs.”

Meg nodded. “All right, fast forward to the present. Rick Sainsbury, son of the late owner of Pioneer Valley Construction Management, wants to run for Congress. Joyce Truesdell leases the land that Pioneer Valley was supposed to have cleaned up, and her cows start getting sick. She’s not the type to keep quiet, so she starts complaining, to Seth and to who knows who else. We know she had the cows’ blood tested, and she said she also had the soil tested, although we haven’t found the report. Then Joyce is murdered. Then someone broke into Seth’s office, his house, and your house. All places where there might be records of the remediation project. Which suggests to me that Joyce was killed to keep attention away from whatever is wrong with the land.”

“Oh, Meg,” Lydia said, “surely you aren’t suggesting that Rick killed someone just for the sake of his campaign? That’s awful.”

“It would be, if it were true. But it’s only a theory. I’d be more than happy to hear any others. How would you connect the dots here?”

“There’s something wrong about the cleanup, and Rick Sainsbury is involved,” Lydia said. “That’s the conclusion I’d draw, much as I dislike the idea.”

“Exactly.”

They both fell silent, a silence that stretched to a minute and more. Finally Lydia said, “I knew Rick’s father. He was a decent and honest man, as far as I knew. Not that we socialized, but he paid on time, and he was good to Cal toward the end, gave him as much work as Cal could handle. I can’t believe he would have knowingly mishandled a contaminated site.”

“There’s a lot we don’t know, Lydia. For a start, we don’t have any proof that the land
is
still contaminated, but that’s easy enough to find out.”

“How?”

“We can request a test of our own. There’s a soil-testing lab based at the university in Amherst, but more important, I’ve got a friend who I think can jump us to the head of the queue, off the record. At least I hope so. If the lab doesn’t find lead in the soil sample, then at least we can eliminate that problem and leave Pioneer Valley in the clear.”

“Shouldn’t the town be doing that?” Lydia asked.

“For all I know, they already have. But it’s not expensive and it’s easy to do, so why not cover all our bases?” Meg replied.

“What do we need to do?” Lydia asked.

“Get soil samples, obviously. Let me call my friend first and see what I need.”

“Meg, wait—shouldn’t we talk to Seth about this? Or Ethan Truesdell, since it’s his land?”

“We don’t need permission to test the soil—technically it’s town-owned land,” Meg said. Actually, she had no idea if that was true, but it seemed logical. And if Ethan saw them and asked, she hoped he would approve. “It’s not like we’re breaking any laws, except maybe trespassing, and who’s going to complain about that?” she reasoned.

“There’s still something about doing this that troubles me,” Lydia said.

“Lydia, I understand, really. But if there’s anything funny going on and somehow that led to a murder, then the fewer people we involve, the better off we are.”

Lydia nodded. “I see your point.”

“Let me call now, and then we can go find the property. Unless you’d rather not go?” Meg asked anxiously.

Lydia laughed. “I wouldn’t miss it! As you say, at the very least it will put our minds at ease, and we can laugh about our overactive imaginations later. How many samples do you think we’ll need?”

“I don’t know, but we’d better take several, from different places on the site, just to be sure. Can you find something we can use to put the samples in?”

“No problem. You go call your friend.”

Meg retrieved her cell phone, grateful that she’d programmed Christopher Ramsdell’s office number into it. She hadn’t had much occasion to call him lately, but she knew that he had facilitated the purchase of the trees for their new orchard planting. At the very least she owed Christopher a thank-you for that, which would be a good way to lead into the conversation. She hit the Send button.

Christopher answered on the third ring. “Meg, my dear, I was hoping I would hear from you!” The hint of an English accent, dating to his childhood years, always cheered Meg. “How is your new venture going?”

“Just fine, Christopher. If Bree hasn’t already told you, the trees were delivered on time and we got them all into the ground by yesterday. Now all we have to do is wait! Thank you so much for putting her in touch with the vendor. She told me it was too good a deal to pass up. If you hadn’t done that, I probably would still be waffling about what to plant and when.”

“It sounds as though you have things well under control. I shall have to come see what you’ve done.”

“I’d love to show you. In some ways it still feels like your orchard, but I’m learning. Listen, Christopher, I have a favor to ask.”

“If it is within my powers, I am happy to comply. What do you need?”

“I’d like to get some soil samples tested, quickly and discreetly. I know I could go through other channels, but that would take a while, and I thought maybe you had a contact at the soil-testing service at the university.”

“I do, of course, but why? You think there’s something wrong with your soil?”

“No, it’s not mine. I can’t tell you all the details right now, but if I could get this done quickly, I’d be very grateful. If the tests come back negative, I’ll tell you what I suspected and we can laugh at it together.”

“Curiouser and curiouser! But it will be an easy favor for me to grant. Do you have the samples you want tested?”

“Not yet, but I will later today. May I drop them off at your office this afternoon? Will you be there?”

“In and out—this new building project has been a morass of small details and eats up huge chunks of my time. And it will go on for another six months, at least! I would welcome the diversion of your visit. If it happens that I’m not around, just leave them outside my door in an anonymous brown paper bag, if you wish.”

Meg could visualize the twinkle in his eye. “That will be fine. But I hope I’ll see you later.”

They rang off after good-byes, and Meg went back to the kitchen, where Lydia waved a box of sealable bags at her. “All set?” Lydia asked. “While you were on the phone I looked up the university testing website online and found out how they wanted the samples to be kept. They recommend plastic bags.”

“Okay, good. Bring a marker so we can label where specifically the samples came from. Whatever we’re dealing with may be localized on the site.”

“The web page said we should take multiple samples, then mix the soil up. But I don’t think they were expecting anything like this!”

The drive over to the land the Truesdells leased took no more than ten minutes. On this bright morning there were few people on the road, and Meg felt relieved: no one would be watching them and wondering what they were doing poking holes in a field. She slowed as she approached what she thought was the right area. “Do you know where we’re going?” she asked Lydia dubiously.

“Sort of. I don’t remember exactly where the paint factory started and ended, but we just went past the Truesdell farm on the left there. Does that help?”

Meg called up a mental picture of the map that Gail had shown her. “Yes, it does. That means that the old factory
site should be right here, and there’s probably an access lane—yes, there.” The entire field was fenced now, but Meg thought she and Lydia could get under the fence easily enough. She turned into the lane and pulled up as close to the fence as she could, then stopped the car. “Here we are.” From the trunk Meg gathered the bags as well as a couple of small trowels. “Ready?”

“I suppose,” Lydia said. “Lead the way.”

Meg held up the lower wire of the fencing to allow Lydia to crawl under, then followed her. She scanned the field: fairly level, although it sloped down toward the north, where Meg remembered seeing the small pond and feeder stream on the map. The grass, tainted or not, certainly
looked
vigorous and healthy. “Too bad we can’t see where the buildings were, although that doesn’t mean that’s where the factory would have dumped their residue. I’d guess that a lot would have ended up in the pond over there, but the buildings might have been closer to the road. Why don’t we get three sets of samples—one where we think the buildings were, one near the water, and one from somewhere in the middle of the field? That should give us a range of readings.”

After half an hour they had collected samples from two of the places she had chosen. It had been easier than she had expected: apparently Joyce had tilled the land before reseeding it the prior year, and mostly the soil yielded easily. They were walking toward the last site, in the middle of the field, when Lydia nudged Meg. “We’ve got company. Over there, by the road.”

Meg followed Lydia’s glance and saw a man leaning against a car parked on the grassy verge by the road. He appeared to be watching them. Meg didn’t recognize him—from his build it was clear that he definitely was not Ethan—and could tell only that he looked to be in his thirties and was substantially built and casually dressed. Why was he watching? Meg stared at him for several seconds, and she knew he saw her, but he made no move.

“Let’s get this last batch and leave,” Meg said to Lydia. “He’s making me nervous.”

They filled a dozen bags, labeling them carefully, but before returning to the car, Meg stopped to survey the surrounding area. She could just see the top of what was presumably the Truesdell barn over the low ridge to the south. The cows must be grazing on the other side. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear them lowing. It all looked very peaceful and ordinary, but what was going on below the surface?

Lydia seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “How unreal that there could be something about this place that would lead to murder.”

“You wouldn’t think so to look at it, would you? It really is a pity. From all I’ve heard, Joyce worked hard and never had a chance to enjoy the results. I wonder how Ethan is managing.”

“It can’t be easy. There’s no way that one person can manage a dairy herd, even a small one. Poor man.”

Meg took one last glance around, then pivoted to look for their mystery observer: he was gone. She said, “Let’s go drop these off at Christopher’s office, and then we can have a late lunch.”

“That sounds lovely. I don’t often get the chance to go out to lunch in Amherst, but I’m not exactly dressed for it.” Lydia looked down at her jeans, now muddy at the knees.