Sour Apples

by Sheila Connolly

  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.

  The next morning, after finding nothing to eat for breakfast since she’d eaten the last of her cereal for dinner last night, Meg set off for the market. It was a beautiful day, warm but not unpleasantly so, and brilliantly sunny. The trees were just beginning to show pale shades of green or, in some cases, red. A few more weeks and they would be fully leafed out. Early in the day the market wasn’t crowded, and Meg quickly filled her shopping cart. Both she and Bree worked hard, and they deserved some decent and healthy food—even though Meg balked at paying outrageous prices for vegetables and fruits shipped in from California, Mexico, and Chile. She thought once again about starting a vegetable garden. Surely the past inhabitants of the house had had kitchen gardens, and she could put in herbs and tomatoes…The fantasy carried her home.

  Inside she had finished unloading the groceries before she noticed the light blinking on her phone, the landline. She had forgotten to turn on her cell phone. It was a terse message from Christopher to please call him at her earliest convenience. He sounded uncharacteristically formal, and Meg wondered why. One way to find out: she hit the button to return his call, hoping he was still in his office.

  He was. “Meg, my dear, thank you for getting back to me promptly. I received the report from my friend at the lab.”

  “My, that was fast! I thought testing took days.”

  “In some cases it can, but the tests for certain chemical substances are simple and quick. I do hope this is not land you are hoping to plant.”

  Meg had a sinking feeling that she knew what he was going to say. “Because?”

  “There were unusually high levels of certain toxic chemicals in all the samples you provided, although the levels varied among the samples. Particularly lead and arsenic. It would not be safe to eat any plant grown on such ground, not without soil treatment. Did you suspect that this would be a problem?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “If it is not your land, you will alert the owner of these hazards?”

  “Of course.” Meg wasn’t certain whether Ethan Truesdell knew of the hazards yet, but she was pretty sure that someone out there already did. “Do you have a printed copy of the results?”

  “No, but I could print out for you the e-mail attachment. My contact at the lab wanted me to have it quickly.”

  “Even better—could you just forward me the e-mail?”

  “Of course. Is there anything further you would like me to do?”

  “Not right now. Thank you for rushing this through, Christopher, an
d for following up. I’ll tell you all about it once I work out a few things.”

  “Whenever you’re ready, my dear. Take care.” He rang off.

  Meg hung up the phone and stood for a moment, staring into space. So the samples from the field were full of lead and arsenic, which was exactly what would be expected from land that had once held a Victorian-era paint factory. The land that the state’s own Department of Environmental Protection had declared safe. The land that had sickened the cows and killed one, and sent Joyce Truesdell snooping—and maybe got her murdered.

  Meg punched in Seth’s cell phone number, and he answered quickly.

  “Meg? What’s up?”

  She took a breath. “Christopher got the lab results back.”

  “Not good, I take it?”

  “Worst case. That land is definitely contaminated with lead and arsenic.”

  “Damn.” There was a muffled sound, as though Seth was talking to someone else. “Meg? I’m in the middle of something here and I can’t break away. I’ll swing by on my way home, okay?”

  “Fine. I’ll call Lydia.”

  “Why—” Meg hung up before Seth could finish his question. She punched in his mother’s cell phone number. Lydia answered on the fifth ring.

  “Lydia, it’s Meg.” There was no way to sugarcoat what she had to say. “I talked to Christopher, and unfortunately, we were right.”

  Meg could hear Lydia’s sigh. “I’m truly sorry to hear that. What now? Does Seth know?”

  “Yes, I called him first. Why don’t you come by after work and we can brainstorm? He said he’d stop by, too.”

  Lydia agreed, and they arranged to meet at six. Seth arrived first, and Lydia followed within a few minutes, Max in tow. Meg had thrown together a quick casserole, but food was the last thing on her mind. She offered drinks all around, and then as they sat down at the kitchen table, Bree came down the back stairs, no doubt drawn by the scent of cooking, before stopping abruptly at the sight of them. “Jeez, you guys look like you’re planning a funeral! What’s up? Or do you want me to butt out?”

  “You might as well stay, because you may be involved here, too,” Meg said.

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea?” Seth asked. “She doesn’t need to know all this.”

  “Yes, she does, Seth,” Lydia contradicted him. “Bree lives here. Besides, she can be objective, since she doesn’t have a personal connection to any of this.”

  Bree dropped into the fourth chair. “Okay, fill me in. This about your mysterious errand yesterday, Meg?”

  “Yes, it is. The short version is that Lydia and I collected samples from the field that Joyce suspected had made her cows sick. I took the samples to Christopher, who passed them on to a friend at the soil lab, and the results showed dangerously high levels of lead and arsenic, on a plot that was supposed to have been cleaned up and that the DEP had signed off on years ago.”

  “You think it’s from that old factory that used to be there, or could somebody have dumped something there since?” Bree asked.

  Seth shook his head. “I haven’t seen the report, but given that there’s both arsenic and lead in the samples, in high levels, it almost has to be from the factory.”

  “So somebody screwed up, huh?” Bree said.

  “Yes, and possibly deliberately,” Meg responded. “The kicker here is that the company responsible for the remediation belonged to Rick Sainsbury’s father. Seth’s father worked on part of that project.”

  “Wow, what a soap opera,” Bree said. “Is there anybody who isn’t involved? So what’re you thinking, that Joyce was killed to keep this quiet?”

  Seth nodded. “That’s what Meg seems to be getting at. Now we need to figure out what to do next. I vote to turn over the tests to Detective Bill Marcus, tell him that we think it could be a motive in Joyce’s murder, and let him run with it. We don’t need to be in the middle of this.”

  “Seth, we already are in the middle of it—what do you call the break-ins?” Meg protested.

  “We don’t know that they’re related. They could still be nothing more than petty vandalism,” Seth said stubbornly.

  “Oh, come on…” Meg stared at him, and in the end he looked away before she did.

  He sighed. “I’ll concede that there’s something going on here and the break-ins may be part of it, but that’s as far as I’ll go. I’m not ready to point fingers at anyone.”

  Meg wasn’t ready to give in yet. “I still think that somebody was looking for all and any reports about that land. I agree that Marcus needs to know, but what do you want him to do?”

  “We’re handing him a motive for Joyce’s murder on a silver platter. We’ll give him a copy of the soil report. And he may not know about the break-ins, if Art didn’t tell him.”

  “Hang on a sec,” Bree interrupted. “So, okay, somebody messed up the cleanup or fudged the reports. Say nobody ever found out—then nothing would happen. Or say somebody discovered it for some reason—then there would be some fines and penalties and stuff for the company, right?”

  “That sounds right,” Seth answered. “When Joyce saw the results from her soil tests, she most likely would have alerted the MDEP and they would have handled it from there. Or told the town—which means me, I guess—the way she did about the blood work on the cows, and then I would have been obligated to tell the state. When she came to me to complain, she had the first report on the blood, and she said she had requested the soil testing but she didn’t know the outcome. So we know her report exists somewhere.”

  “But somebody made sure she was dead pretty quick,” Bree said. “Why?”

  “Because if word of the botched cleanup got out, the company that handled it would suffer,” Meg said.

  Bree nodded. “Yeah, but they’d apologize to everybody, they’d pay whatever fines, and they’d fix the problem, and that would be that.”

  “All the other remediation jobs the company had done would have to be reexamined—that could destroy them,” Seth pointed out.

  “So that’s why they’d kill Joyce? Seems kind of extreme. I mean, cutting corners is one thing, but murder?”

  “It is. But if you accept that covering up the poor cleanup job was the motive, it’s a little more complicated than that,” Seth said. “If Joyce was killed to keep it quiet, that implies that somebody knows the job was done badly or not at all, and doesn’t want that information to go public. The fact that somebody really wants to find the records suggests that there’s evidence buried in there somewhere.”

  “Isn’t it ironic that the only reason this person didn’t find the records is because both I and the town are such lousy housekeepers?” Lydia said.

  Meg smiled at her, then addressed everyone. “The murder and the break-ins suggest that somebody knew this and thought it posed a threat to the Pioneer Valley company, and that means to the Sainsbury campaign. I mean, as Bree pointed out, if it was an honest mistake by the company, Rick could have come out and taken his licks and promised to make things all better, and probably would have scored points for it. He could have blamed it all on his father, who’s not around to contradict him. Look, Sainsbury was and is CEO of Pioneer Valley. Even if he has no direct knowledge of the original cleanup, or if it happened under his father, if somebody at Pioneer Valley knows that someone is sniffing around the history of the Granford site, that person would most likely have warned him. The buck stops at the top, right? The fact that this came out just as he decided to run for office made it important to quash it—fast. How much do you think he knows?”

  “That’s the big question. But aren’t you making an awful lot of assumptions, going from contaminated land all the way to Rick Sainsbury’s campaign?” Seth said.

  “Do you have any better suggestions?” Meg countered. “As Bree said, if it was just the company, they could probably handle the negative publicity and the fines. But add the campaign to the mix and it becomes a bigger problem.”

  Seth sighed. “Maybe. I hate to
bring this up, Meg, but you have a way to find out.”

  “What—Lauren? What would she know?”

  “She’s been working for Sainsbury.”

  “Yes, but only for a couple of months,” Meg said. “This problem goes back years and involves things that Lauren would have no reason to know about.”

  “You’re suggesting that somebody in the campaign knows something. Okay, maybe I’ll buy that. But it doesn’t have to be Rick—maybe it’s someone working for Rick. Lauren can tell us who’s involved with the campaign, staff or volunteers. Also, she keeps Rick’s schedule—so she’d know if he had an alibi for the evening Joyce died.”

  That last comment stunned them into silence for several moments. Then Meg shook her head. “We all saw him at the Spring Fling that night.”

  “Yes, but not until late,” Seth said impatiently. “If Joyce was killed during milking, he would have had plenty of time to clean up and go on about his business. We don’t know what he was doing earlier. Lauren would.”

  “I guess,” Meg replied. “But Lauren’s not very happy with me at the moment, so I don’t think she’ll take kindly to my asking that kind of question. I won’t believe she’d be involved in something like this. She admires the man.”

  “She doesn’t know him very well, does she?” Seth said.

  Meg tried to recall how Lauren had described how she’d originally gotten involved in the campaign. “Well, no, not exactly.”

  “Meg, I’m not saying Lauren has anything to do with whatever this is, but she does know what’s been going on with the campaign during the past couple of weeks, which is when all this started. Lauren knows who’s working on the campaign—it’s still a small group. And if it turns out that the murder is connected to Rick’s congressional ambitions, do you really want your friend to be caught in the middle of it?”

  Meg stared at Seth and reluctantly acknowledged that he had a point. “Of course not. So you want me to try to patch things up and then pump her for information on who’s who and when what happened? Before or after we talk to Marcus?”

  “I’ll deal with Marcus. You get to Lauren as soon as you can. I have a nasty feeling that this isn’t over yet.”