“Why did that get him in trouble with the university?” Meg ate a handful of potato chips.
“GreenGrow siphoned quite a bit of time from Jason’s academic pursuits. Don’t misunderstand me: our department supports the concept of organic farming. We even offer a few courses devoted to it, as well as to the public policy issues surrounding pesticide use. GreenGrow was a problem only because Jason had become increasingly confrontational over the past year or two. I think he came to regard organic purity as a holy mission of some sort, and he could be very self-righteous about it. Mind you, that alone would not have created trouble within the department, but he was in fact neglecting his responsibilities. You see, to obtain a doctoral degree, a student must submit and defend a thesis within six years of beginning the program, and this spring marks the end of his sixth year. He petitioned for an extension, but the director of the graduate program declined to grant it, and quite frankly, I don’t think it was warranted. However, Jason took it rather amiss. He claimed that the department was out to discredit him because of his outspoken opinions about pesticide use.”
“Was he any good? I mean, academically?”
“I’d say yes. He was an intelligent young man, he did well in his course work, and the drafts I had seen of his thesis were sound, if somewhat careless.”
“You were his thesis advisor?”
“I’m afraid I was. I urged him to apply himself to completing the degree requirements before pursuing his other interests, but his attention was elsewhere far too much of the time.”
“How did he take that?”
“He told me I was a stooge of the administration and was conspiring with them to silence him.”
Based on what she knew of Christopher’s character, Meg found this laughable. “He sounds a bit paranoid. Unless, of course, it was just thesis anxiety. Some people have trouble finishing things.”
Christopher sighed. “I know. I’ve seen it before. But I think Jason’s trouble went beyond that. He was obsessed with his cause and found the trappings of academia increasingly irrelevant. The department had no choice but to issue an ultimatum: finish the thesis or withdraw from the program.”
“What did he decide?”
“I don’t know. We were scheduled to meet this week, which probably would have resulted in his termination. As I told that unpleasant Detective Marcus.”
Meg chose her next words carefully. “Christopher, do you think that Jason might have been depressed about being booted out of the university, and killed himself?”
Christopher regarded her steadily. “Heartless though it may sound, I think the young man was too full of himself to consider ending his life that way. Although if he did, I’m sure he would make it a political statement of some sort. Do you by any chance know how he died?”
Meg glanced around the room, where everyone, including the waitstaff, seemed to be ignoring them. She dropped her voice. “Art Preston said the ME has ruled out the most obvious causes, so he’s thinking it was some form of poison, but it’s going to take a while to figure out which one.” Meg stopped because Christopher was staring blindly at a space over her head. “Christopher? What are you thinking?”
Slowly he brought his gaze back to her. “You might pass on the word that the medicos should look at pesticides.”
Meg was startled. “Why? Do you know something?”
“No, not at all. But Jason was so . . . militant, you might say, about pesticide use. If—and I used that term deliberately—he ended his own life, he might have considered a pesticide the appropriate means. He would have had access to any number. As would many of his—I think ‘en emies’ is too strong a word, but there were those who disagreed strongly with him. He was on a crusade, and he managed to anger a number of people. Some of them no doubt have access to pesticides as well and could have used them unwisely, thinking it would be a fitting end. Jason could be considered a pest, if I may make a poor joke.”
Meg wondered how she could find a way to pass on Christopher’s suggestion to the medical examiner. “I’ll see what I can do. How would pesticide poisoning work, in a human?”
“There is no single answer to that. It depends on the pesticide in question. But though they vary in their toxicity, they are undeniably effective if the dose is large enough. Although there remains the issue of how to administer them. Do you have any idea when Jason died?”
Meg shook her head. “No, Art just gave me the bare bones, and he was probably breaking a slew of rules to do that much. The ME originally guessed around twenty-four hours before I found him, on Monday. And it’s still not clear where he died.”
“Well, what happens now?” Christopher’s eyes were warm with concern.
“You mean with the orchard? The police are done with it—there really wasn’t much to find there. You know, I’ve been wondering about the springhouse. What’s it doing in the middle of the orchard?”
Christopher looked pleased to have a safe topic to discuss. “Natural springs arise where they choose—there might be a cleft in the underlying rock there, or a vein of clay. You can tell it’s not very active, since there is no runoff down the hill. But at some point in time it must have served a purpose, whether for drinking water or to water the trees. That’s probably as much as we’ll ever know. Nonetheless, it might serve you well if you wish to install an irrigation system for the orchard.”
“Will I need one? You know, there’s a well in the basement of the house. It’s still open. That’s part of what got me wondering—isn’t the water table down there, not a hundred feet up the hill?”
“As I said, it’s a spring, and they may pop up in the most unexpected places.” Christopher checked his watch. “Well, my dear, I suppose I must return and prepare for my class, if you will be so kind as to drop me back?”
“Of course. Oh, one other thing: do you know if Bree knew Jason?”
Christopher paused for a moment. “Not to my knowledge, but I’m not privy to the personal lives of most of my students. I believe Jason was a teaching assistant at some point, although not lately, and they might have crossed paths. Otherwise the undergraduates and the graduate students have little contact. Why do you ask?”
“She was at the house yesterday, and apparently she hadn’t heard about the murder.” Which, as Meg thought about it, seemed strange. “Could she really be that oblivious?”
“Ah, Meg, were you never a student at a large university? We are our own little universe here, and it is possible to shut out the rest of the world, if one so chooses. The students in particular are singularly uninformed about external events.”
“If you say so. I only brought it up because when I mentioned Jason’s name, Bree reacted rather oddly. But that could have been in reaction to the murder, not to Jason specifically.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you. You’ll have to ask her yourself.”
As they drove back toward campus, Meg asked, “Does the rest of the department know about Jason’s death?”
Christopher turned toward her. “I suppose they may have seen it on the news, as I did. But in general we aren’t exactly a gregarious bunch, and we tend to follow our own pursuits, so I don’t know what has been discussed. Dear heavens, I suppose as his advisor it falls to me to post some kind of notice, or perhaps plan a small informal gathering in his memory. What do you think?”
Meg wasn’t sure what custom dictated when the deceased was someone who had apparently alienated most of his colleagues, but a recognition of some sort seemed called for. “That would be nice. If you do, can you let me know when it will be? I’d like to pay my respects.” And see how some of the other faculty members act, under the circumstances, she added to herself.
She didn’t fool Christopher, who said with a smile, “A bit of sleuthing, eh? Still, I see no harm in that. And I’ll extend the invitation to the graduate students of the department as well as the faculty members. An excellent plan.”
What Christopher had told her about Jason suggested that he
wasn’t a very nice person and had probably annoyed any number of people. But being annoying was seldom enough reason for killing someone. If in fact he had been murdered, which wasn’t established. Yet.
And she ought to do some research on the GreenGrow people, whoever they were. Besides, if she was investigating the full spectrum of options for managing her orchard, she should educate herself about pesticides and the alternatives. Which would give her the perfect excuse to talk to them, if she could track them down.
It was a plan.
8
When Meg returned home, she found Bree sitting on the step outside her kitchen door, her jacket wrapped tightly around her. Bree stood up as Meg got out of her car.
“Why didn’t you just let yourself in?” Meg asked as soon as she was in earshot. “You could have kept warm.”
Bree shrugged. “Seemed kind of rude, with you not here. But I need to talk to you.”
Meg fought off apprehension as she struggled with the stiff lock on the door. When the door finally opened, she led the way into the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink? Have you had lunch?” she asked, tossing her coat toward the hook on the wall.
Bree made a vague gesture with her hand. “Don’t worry about that. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”
Looking at Bree’s expression, Meg felt something like pity for the girl. She seemed so young. Or maybe it was just that she made Meg feel old, though there wasn’t much more than ten years between them. “Then let’s sit down and you can tell me whatever it is.” Meg pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and waited for Bree to follow suit.
Bree sat, her hands clasped tightly in front of her on the table, avoiding Meg’s eyes. “You probably wondered why I left so fast last night,” she began.
“I thought maybe you were upset by hearing about the body.”
“Well, yes, but the thing is, I knew Jason.” She stopped, apparently struggling for words.
“From the university?” Meg prompted.
“Yeah. He was my TA a couple of years ago.” Bree looked away, uncomfortable.
Meg stood up. “I’m going to make some tea, but please go on.” Maybe if Meg was looking at something else, Bree would relax. She filled the kettle with water and set it on the stove.
“There was more than that, I guess,” Bree volunteered to Meg’s back.
Meg bustled around looking for mugs and tea bags. “You knew him outside of class?”
“Yeah. We sort of dated for a while that year, but things got, I don’t know, kind of messy.”
Wasn’t that frowned upon? Meg turned and faced Bree. “Is that allowed? Was he harassing you? Threatening your grade if you didn’t go out with him?”
Bree looked disgusted. “No, nothing like that. I could have handled that, no problem. The university’s pretty good about warning people about that kind of thing. And I don’t think he was that much into the whole relationship thing.”
Now Meg was mystified. “What, then?”
“You know anything about Jason?”
Meg debated briefly about filling Bree in on her conversation with Christopher and decided against it. “I never met him. What should I know?” She comforted herself that she hadn’t lied outright.
Bree sat back, her nervous expression fading as she warmed to her subject. “He was smart, and he was a pretty good teacher, I guess. But he didn’t much like rules, and he was kind of weird.”
The kettle whistled, and Meg filled the mugs. “What do you mean, weird?”
“Like he was on a mission. He was really into this whole organic thing, like pesticides were evil, and God wanted us to keep the plants pure as He intended.”
“That sounds kind of extreme. You’ll have to fill me in: did he have a lot of support for his position?”
“Aren’t you taking that orchard class?”
Meg carried the mugs to the table and sat down again. “I’m auditing it, but I’m kind of overwhelmed by all the material coming at me. Can you give me the short version?”
Bree stirred sugar into her tea. “Okay. So, there’s this whole spectrum of approaches, see? And pure organic is at one end of the line, and the big corporate chemical companies who make pesticides are at the other end, and integrated pest management is somewhere in the middle. And there are different strategies for IPM. There’s chemically based, where you wait until the losses to pest damage are greater than the cost of spraying, or biologically based, which lets the natural enemies have the first crack. And that’s just a start. You with me so far?”
“I think so. Obviously Christopher advocates IPM, but we haven’t gotten down to details yet or discussed what approach he’s been using here at the orchard.”
“Look, you know the apples you see in supermarkets? They’re all shiny and perfect, right?”
“Yes. Why?”
“That kind of perfect apple doesn’t happen in nature, and you’re going to find out pretty fast how many pests and blights and stuff are looking to do a number on your apples. Until consumers are willing to accept less-than-perfect fruit, we’re going to have to use pesticides. But we can use them only when needed, and pay attention to their overall impact, how they interact with other systems. For instance, bees, right?” Bree looked at Meg to be sure she was paying attention. “You need bees for pollination, of course, but you spray the wrong thing at the wrong time, you kill your bees, and there goes your crop. There’s a whole lot of fine-tuning going on, all the time. You’ve got to watch your weather, how warm it gets, how much it rains. You’ve got to keep your eye on which insects show up, and when, and decide what you want or need to do about them. You’ve got to keep up with the literature, because there’s new research coming out all the time, and new products. Natural products, too, like bioantagonists or the kaolin strategy. You’ve got to decide whether to treat prophylactically or to wait and see just how bad an infestation turns out to be in any given year.”
Meg held up a hand. “Wait, please! That’s why I hired you, because I don’t know any of this stuff! I’m willing to learn, but it’s going to take some time. I get the basics: some pesticides are necessary if you want to produce a marketable crop, and you have to use them carefully. But there are different opinions about what that really means, right?”
Bree nodded vigorously. “Exactly. And Jason was kind of fanatic about it. He thought all pesticides were evil, and there wasn’t any arguing with him. What happened with us . . . Well, he wanted to get serious, but not about us. He wanted to convert me to his way of thinking, and I couldn’t do that, because I have a corporate scholarship from a pesticide company, and that’s the only way I could pay for college. He thought it would be a real coup for him if he could bring me over to his side, but he didn’t stop to think what it would mean for me.”
“And you didn’t want to go along?” Meg suppressed a smile.
“No way. Look, maybe I was naïve, and for a while it was cool that this grad student was interested in me. And he could be real charming if he wanted to. He did kind of attract people, you know? But after a while it got old. He was kind of one-note, always dragging this organic purity thing into every conversation and pushing it all the time. After a while I got sick of it, and I told him he should back off. And then he got all high and mighty and said he was disappointed in me and he’d really hoped that I was smart enough to see reason. His reason. When I didn’t back down and kiss his feet, he got pissed at me. The end wasn’t real pretty.”
Meg wondered if she was telling the whole truth. “Did he have any other friends who shared his views?”
“You mean, like that GreenGrow bunch?” Bree snorted. “Mixed bag, I guess. Some of them are okay, but some are kind of out there, you know? I think their parents fed them a lot of crap about the sixties and all the great activism that went on then. You part of all that?”
Meg tried not to laugh. At thirty-two she was hardly old enough to have taken part in any activities in the sixties. “No, that was a bit before my time.
But certainly I’ve heard about it, and it sounds as though some good things came out of activist movements in that era.”
“Maybe. But GreenGrow has been all about the show, with no substance. They run around spouting rhetoric and posturing for the cameras, and Jason was right at the front of the pack. But they don’t follow through. They’re colorful and make a lot of noise, so they get news coverage, at least now and then, but they’re giving responsible people like Christopher a bad name.”
“How heavily was Jason involved?”
“He thought he was the star. Heck, he was one of the founders of the group, and he certainly kept it going. They’ve got maybe fifteen, twenty members, although I know a bunch of people who got involved and then burned out pretty quickly. The ones that’re left, they’ve really bought into the whole package.”
“You know any of them now?”
Bree shook her head. “Some, but mostly I’ve steered clear of Jason and his buddies. I don’t have time for that crap anyway, and like I said, I needed the scholarship and I didn’t want to jeopardize that.”
Meg took a deep breath. “Bree, were you worried about telling me that you knew Jason?”
Bree looked down at the table. “Maybe. I thought maybe you’d think I had something to do with his death. Dumb, huh?”
“Not at all.” Meg had more experience than she wanted in that arena. “Bree, I think you should tell the state police about your connection to Jason before somebody else does. I can put you in touch with the detective investigating the case—Detective Marcus.”
“You want me to go to the state police and tell them that Jason and I hooked up for a little while two years ago and it’s just a coincidence that he ends up murdered at the place I’m working?”
Stated like that, it did sound suspicious, but Meg persisted. “It would be better coming from you than from someone else. The fact that you’re connected both to Jason and to this place is going to jump out at them.”
Rotten to the Core Page 5
