Sour Apples (23 page)

“We can find a take-out place for sandwiches if you like,” Meg said.

The trip to the UMass campus took only another fifteen minutes, and Meg was lucky to find a visitor parking space near Christopher’s office. “Are you coming in, Lydia?”

“I look a mess,” Lydia said.

“Christopher won’t care, believe me.”

“What are we telling him?” Lydia asked as she reluctantly followed Meg into the building that housed Christopher’s office.

“Don’t worry, I told him what we needed, but I said I
couldn’t tell him the details. After all, if I did, he might feel obligated to do something official about it, and I think that would be premature. This whole thing may be no more than a spiderweb of conjectures, and we need time to consider what our next step would be. Which could be nothing.”

“Let us hope. Did he mind being kept in the dark?”

“I think he trusts me, and I know I trust him.” Meg knocked on the door and heard footsteps approaching.

Christopher opened it, beaming. Meg thought he looked a bit more rumpled than usual, his silver hair mussed, his shirt wrinkled. That campus construction project must be keeping him very busy.

“Ah, there you are, Meg,” he greeted, her, “quite prompt. And I see you’ve brought company.”

“Lydia has been helping me collect samples. Christopher, this is Lydia Chapin, Seth’s mother. She lives next door, sort of.”

“I’m delighted to meet you, Lydia. I hope Meg here isn’t leading you astray.”

Lydia smiled at him. “If she is, I’m going willingly. It’s lovely to meet you, too. I’m sure I’ve seen you from a distance. Didn’t Meg tell me that you managed the Warren orchard for years?”

“I did. It caused me no small pang to turn it over, even to the capable hands of Meg and her delightful assistant Briona—who in fact used to be a student of mine, and a good one.”

“It was Christopher who recommended Bree to me, for which I will be eternally grateful,” Meg told Lydia.

“She has worked out well, hasn’t she?” Christopher beamed like a proud parent.

“She’s been terrific. You would have been so impressed: we got those new trees planted in two days.”

“I am impressed! Make sure you water them well, but hold off on fertilizing until they’re established.”

“That’s what Bree said. I just follow orders.”

“I hate to rush you, but I have yet another meeting with the construction manager. You have the samples you spoke of?”

“I do.” Meg handed over a carrier bag containing the bagged soil samples. “We took them from three different locations, but we labeled them only 1, 2, and 3.”

“And you aren’t going to share with me where you obtained them, hmm? Are there any tests in particular that I should ask for?”

“If there’s such a thing as a full chemical panel, could you have them do that? Again, I don’t want to say any more.”

“Pesticides? Organic content?”

“No and no. Just any chemicals that shouldn’t be there, or at least, not in large concentrations. All right?”

“As you wish. It may take a day or two, depending on how busy the lab is right now.”

“I understand. And thank you. I appreciate your discretion. When you have a little spare time, you should come over and see the new plantings. Maybe say a few words over them and encourage them to grow?”

Christopher’s mouth twitched. “Sounds positively druidical, but I think I’d enjoy that. Did you know that the apple tree was sacred to the Druids?”

“No, I didn’t, but trust you to know! Let me know when the reports are done, and thank you again.”

“Ladies, I’ll walk you out. Lydia, it was lovely to meet you. I hope our paths will cross again.”

They parted company at the front door of the building. Christopher took off at a brisk pace toward the campus’s administrative center, while Meg and Lydia walked more slowly back to Meg’s car.

“My, he is charming, isn’t he?” Lydia said.

“He is, and it’s absolutely sincere. How rare is that? He also genuinely likes to help people, like Bree, for example. She could have had trouble finding a job, since she was young and untested, not to mention female and Jamaican,
but Christopher put the two of us together and everybody benefitted. And on a higher level, he was responsible for wooing donors and bringing the new research center to campus.”

“So he’s a charmer on more than one level.” Lydia fastened her seatbelt and sat back in the seat. “You know, I’m not sure what results I want from these tests. If they find nothing out of the ordinary, we’ll feel stupid but we won’t have to do anything further. If they do find something, then what?”

“Lydia, I wish I knew. One step at a time.”

Meg dropped Lydia back at her house and went home to take a shower. She found Bree sitting in the kitchen reading a magazine when she arrived.

“You’ve been gone for a while,” Bree said, without looking up. “Anything I need to know about?”

Meg debated about how much to tell her. “I went over to help Lydia search her attic for those papers, and then saw Christopher this afternoon and thanked him for his help finding the new trees.”

“Why were you in Amherst?” Bree asked.

“It’s kind of complicated. But don’t worry, it’s nothing serious.” Even as she said the words, Meg wondered if they were true. The results from the lab could mean something quite serious was going on, but there was no need to involve Bree until she had some concrete information. “Christopher reminded me that we need to water the new trees.”

“Well, duh. All taken care of. Having that spring up the hill is really a blessing. But some of our irrigation lines need to be replaced.”

“You figure out what we need and buy it. Right now, I want a shower.” She fled up the stairs before Bree could ask any more questions.

By the time Meg returned downstairs, Bree had retreated to her own room. She pondered what to make for dinner. Bree could cook, Meg knew, but she usually chose not to. Meg wasn’t sure why she clung to the idea of a seated meal at least once a day, but ordering in seemed inefficient and extravagant, even if Bree had no objections.

Her ruminations were interrupted by Seth’s entry through the back door. “Meg, I wish you hadn’t dragged my mother into this,” he said abruptly.

“What, you mean the old business files? You knew we were going to go through them today. You’ve talked to her?” For the life of her Meg couldn’t see why he would be upset.

“Yes, I stopped by on my way home. She asked me to haul the file boxes downstairs so she could finish going through them. And she told me what you’d found in them.”

“That your father had done some work on the site cleanup? We’d already guessed that, hadn’t we? All we were doing was looking to see if there were any records that referred to the remediation of the factory site among your company files, and in fact we found some. We didn’t learn a whole lot. There were some invoices for your father’s hours and a very vague description of what he did, and that’s all. Why is that a problem?”

“Because if someone thinks my mother knows something from those files, she could be in danger.”

“Is that what this is about? Seth, listen to yourself! Your mother is a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. She’s not a frail flower who needs protection. She knows the risks—she’s already been broken into once, remember, and it’s only because the files were buried in the attic that whoever it was didn’t find them. She was going to go through those no matter what, and, as you well know,
she asked me to help.” Meg hesitated for a moment, then decided to put everything on the table and let Seth get over it all at once—if at all. “Did she tell you what else we did today?”

“No. Do I want to know?”

“Probably not, but in the interest of full disclosure I’m going to tell you anyway. We collected soil samples from Joyce’s pasture, and we delivered them to Christopher Ramsdell, who has a contact at the university’s soil-testing lab in Amherst. He said he’d ask for a quick turnaround.”

Seth stared for a moment. “I don’t even know where to start with what’s wrong with that. Leaving aside whether you were trespassing and interfering in the town’s business, do you really want to involve
more
people in this mess?”

“I didn’t tell Christopher where the samples came from. I just asked him to do it for me as a favor. Besides, you know he can be discreet. If nothing shows up in the tests, that’s the end of it, and Detective Marcus can look somewhere else for Joyce’s killer. If something does—”

“Then you and I are going to have to do something about it. What was your plan?”

He still hadn’t cooled down, Meg noted. “I haven’t thought that far. Take the results to Detective Marcus, if lead shows up? There’s something else noteworthy we found in the files: the company that did the work was run by Rick Sainsbury’s father.”

“Oh, hell.” Seth dropped into a chair and rubbed his face. “You see the implications, don’t you?”

“Yes, Seth. I’m not stupid. Look, all your mother and I did was take the first step: we wanted to find out if there was something wrong with the soil. Ethan hasn’t given you the report Joyce asked for, right? So now we’ll have our own. If nothing suspicious shows up in this blind test, this all goes away. If something does, then we find out why, and why the state inspectors missed it. Look, Granford has some liability here, too, right?”

“For the cleanup of the town’s property? Yes, we do, but we accepted the information we were given. We can’t second-guess everything.”

“Of course not. But it could be that someone lied to you.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

Meg shrugged. “I don’t know. Someone did a shoddy job and pocketed the money anyway?”

“That’s still a possibility. But you’re saying that if something shows up on these reports—and it’s still an ‘if’—then it follows that someone knowingly gave a false report to the town? And the state? Who? Are you suggesting it was Sainsbury’s company?”

“Seth, I don’t know. I don’t know how these things work or who stood to benefit a decade ago. But don’t you find it curious that somebody seems to be trying very hard to bury this piece of history at the same time Rick Sainsbury decides to run for office?”

Seth stared at her. “You really want to take on the Golden Boy Candidate right now?”

“Not personally, but better now than later, don’t you think? Look, Seth, I’m not accusing him of anything, or even his company—at least, not yet. Let’s wait for the results. And I thought you didn’t like Rick Sainsbury. Your mother speaks well of his father.”

“I don’t, but that’s personal. It has nothing to do with his father.”

“You keep saying that, but you still haven’t told me what the problem is between you two,” Meg countered.

“I don’t think it’s relevant. I could be wrong about him, or he may have changed, but it has no bearing on his running for office.”

Even if Rick was somehow tied into a corporate cover-up that might have led to a murder? Still, Meg had to admit that was all pure conjecture at the moment. She decided to let it drop. “Are you hungry?”

“You’re changing the subject.” Seth sighed. “Yes, I’m hungry. But I promised Mom I’d eat with her.”

“Fine—then she can give you her side of the story. Oh, before I forget—what did you do with the Granford files you collected regarding the Truesdells’ leased land? They’re not still in your office, are they?”

Seth shook his head. “No. I stuck them in the safe at town hall. It may be an antique, but it won’t be easy to get into. And the town clerk doesn’t even know what’s in there. Are you still worried? The building does have an alarm system.”

“I suppose they’re safe enough there. Should we put signs up here and at your house, saying ‘No incriminating files here’?” Meg said, trying to lighten Seth’s mood.

“Wouldn’t that kind of tip our hand, that we know somebody wants whatever’s in them?” He stood up. “Look, I’ve got to go. Make sure you lock up, and don’t do anything foolish, all right?”

What would he consider foolish? Meg wondered. “Yes, oh big strong protector. I will stay here and tend to my knitting. Oh, that’s right—I don’t know how to knit.”

“Meg,” Seth said, clearly exasperated. Then he softened. “Please?” He pulled her out of her chair and gave her a quick kiss, then left.

Meg wasn’t sure how she felt about his protective behavior—which apparently extended to his mother, too. What had she done that put anyone at risk? She’d asked for some tests on some anonymous soil samples. There could be plenty of reasons why she wouldn’t want her name attached to them, and she knew Christopher wouldn’t say anything. Seth was just overreacting, wasn’t he? But, as she had to keep reminding herself, Joyce Truesdell was dead. Murdered. Someone had killed her.

And why had that guy been watching Joyce and her in Ethan’s field? Funny, she’d forgotten to mention that to Seth.

“He gone?” Bree stuck her head around the corner. “Were you two fighting? Everything okay?”

“More or less. Look, I really don’t feel like cooking. How about a healthy meal of cereal and ice cream? I know for a fact that we have those.”

“Works for me,” Bree said, grinning. Thank goodness Bree was smart enough not to ask any more questions about Seth’s anger, Meg realized with relief. Meg wanted time to think about what had him so concerned, before she shared it.