Poison Apples

by Nancy Means Wright

She sat there a moment, stunned. Then found her breath, her feet, her anger. She called Dr. Greiner. There was no time to see the cows first. “Yes, slashed. Stabbed. Lucien thinks three. Maybe more! You better bring an assistant. We’ll meet you out by the road.”

  She grabbed a flashlight, followed Lucien to the pasture. It was a good quarter of a mile, the poor man couldn’t walk fast; he told her to go ahead, he’d be puffing behind.

  The bellowing brought her to the right place, the whole herd bawling and mewling. It was hard to tell how many were hurt;

  one would think all of them, from the noise. But on closer scrutiny it seemed to be just three, as Lucien had said. One, Gypsy, had been stabbed in the belly. A second, Elizabeth, was cut in the leg; she was pregnant, maybe eight months along. Had they hurt the calf? She was filled with fury. She felt like a giant bee, wanting to sting—anybody, everybody! Who would do this? she asked Lucien. Who would hurt a pregnant cow? Any cow... . Did they think these were cardboard beasts, like the Ben & Jerry figures? Gypsy was spooked. She would alternately lie down and then stumble up again, as though she’d attack an invisible enemy. It wasn’t until Doc Greiner and his assistant arrived that the cow calmed down. The doc gave her a sedative. He said they’d get all three cows on antibiotics. Gypsy wasn’t pregnant, thank God, but she wouldn’t give milk for a while. None of them would. The whole herd, it seemed, was spooked. And here was Moll Flanders, pushing her big black head under Ruth’s arm. Ruth let it stay.

  “Who did this?” she asked Lucien again. “Who would do such a thing?”

  Then she remembered the telephone threat. Was this her punishment?

  When she got back, her foreman was there, ready to call in the cows for milking. His cowboy hat was cocked on the back of his head, he’d spilled hot chocolate or something on his shirt. She was so glad to see him, she gave him a hug; then told him what had happened. “What shall we do, Tim? What’s the next move?”

  “Milk ’em,” he said. “Get ’em back in the routine. You look like you could use a cuppa coffee. Then you can bring one out to me. Right? Get to work, the two of us.”

  “Get to work,” she repeated. “Coffee. Right.” And she dashed back to the house. She’d grind the beans; then she’d call Colm Hanna. The work would help. But she couldn’t have someone slashing her cows.

  What would they do next?

  She couldn’t think. Coffee first, she told herself. Then call Colm. She took them in that order.

  Chapter Forty

  The blue Horizon ground to a stop in front of the Willmarth farmhouse and Colm Hanna got out, feeling lame, feeling concerned that Ruth had ignored the warning and gone on to interview those pickers. “I know I’m being picky,” he quipped, “but...”

  “Yes, you are,” she agreed when he carried his complaint into her barn, where she was finishing the afternoon milking. She appeared to be concentrating—as though she hadn’t another worry in the world. “What do you want me to do, sit back and make popovers while my neighbor’s orchard is being destroyed, tree by tree?”

  “Exactly,” he said, leaning against a stanchion where a huge Holstein was on the machine. It turned a chocolate eye on him and then lifted its head and bellowed in his ear; it sounded like a foghorn. Jeez, his back was bothering him. He’d helped his dad lay out a body that morning—a 325-pound body. It wasn’t right. At that weight they ought to be made to cremate. “I just read in the Free Press about this guy out west who shot some other guy because the other guy’s rabbit got loose on his property and the guy said he warned the other guy twice and still the rabbit hopped over to his land and feasted on his veggie garden.”

  “Good reason for a killing,” she said, pulling on the cow’s teats—to loosen them up before attaching the tubes, she explained when he raised an eyebrow. Prime the pump....

  “Just a shooting, this time, in the leg. But there seems to be more concern here for listening to a warning. One killing already, right?”

  “Yes, though in a slant sort of way. One might call it manslaughter, I suppose. If Bartholomew hadn’t been taking warfarin...” Now she was squirting milk into her palm. “Thank God,” she said, “no lumps. I mean, no mastitis. These poor cows are stressed out. Ripe for mastitis.”

  “It was murder, however you look at it, Ruthie,” he said. “Look, woman, I want you to lie low, let this neighbor help herself. I mean, she’ll want you to when she hears about that cow slashing. Jeez.”

  “It was Gypsy who got the worst of it. And Elizabeth—I’m worried about her calf. It’s due next month.”

  “Elizabeth? The one who cornered me by the fence last spring? Practically sat on me when I slipped down in the mud? Maybe that slasher did you a favor.”

  Uh-oh, he’d said the wrong thing. She was disconnecting the tubes, they flashed steel in her hand. Was she going to attack him? Milk his brain? He stepped back. “That was Zelda, not Elizabeth,” she said. “And I won’t lie low, damn it, Colm. I won’t play scared. I’ll bring the cows in at night. I’m not letting any creeps intimidate me. I’m not!”

  He knew better than to cross her when she was up in arms. “Okay, down, woman. Go ahead. When they set fire to your barn, don’t come running to me.”

  “Ha! I won’t. You can count on that. Anyhow, all the more reason why we should find out who’s behind this orchard bashing.” She smiled a diabolical smile. Sometimes he wondered what, who, he was involved with here. But he loved her, he loved this intractable woman. Maybe because she was so intractable. . ..

  “Marry me,” he said, flinging himself, unaccountably, absurdly, into a pile of hay, kneeing himself over to her. “Marry me, Ruthie, and we’ll find those villains together. One of them might be Pete, you said he’s trying to develop this neighborhood. We’ll save the neighborhood, save the farms, save the orchards, save Vermont.”

  “There are Vermonters who are doing that,” she said, “buying up land, putting it in common trust. Go join their team if you want to save Vermont. My team doesn’t have any capital behind it.”

  “Oh yes, it does,” he said, gazing up at her breasts. They were heaving under the periwinkle-blue shirt; her neck was perspiring, pink as a cow’s teat. “Ruthie,” he said, but she wasn’t in the mood. She was herding the cows out of the milking room, motioning him to his feet.

  “I have to see to Gypsy, she’s over there in her stall. She’s on antibiotics. They’re all spooky today, even the ones who weren’t stabbed. That guy used a nine-inch blade, some kind of hunting or survival knife. What kind of creep does that? Knifing a cow in its belly?”

  She grabbed his arms, pulled him up. He was weak-kneed, getting flabby in his belly. “Colm, I want you to interview the suspects outside the orchard. That minister, that woman developer. Find out who the third partner is. I sense she—he—has something to do with these goings-on. Why else wouldn’t Pete let on who that person is? He knows, oh, you can bet he knows.” She paused, changed her mind. “No, I’ll talk to Pete. But, Colm ...” He was on his feet, she was grabbing his hands so tightly they were numb. “See those women. The ones who were praying. They might know something. About that minister, about the death of Cassandra Wickham.”

  “Oh no, not those women,” he said. “Jeez.”

  “You can do it, Colm. I need you. Moira Earthrowl needs you. You can’t imagine what she’s been through, Colm...”

  “Well, I’ll try. By the way, they’ve released Cassandra’s body. There was nothing to indicate anything more than that she’d been struck by a car—judging from the height of the injury, a sport utility vehicle. Could be a Chevy Blazer, I suppose. The impact came from behind. I mean, she was hit in the back: spinal fracture, broken pelvis.”

  “Stan seemed to think she ran toward the road. Even the minister claimed she ran at the car—and he said she was hit from behind. There’s a contradiction here. And he’s the prosecution’s star witness. He could be lying. Find out, will you, Colm? Maybe it wasn’t Stan’s car at all. Maybe it was another car, another
sport utility vehicle. I mean, you see them all over the place. Colm? You’ll do this for me? I’ll help with Pete. But you’ll have to take on that minister—what’s his name? Turnbull? Sounds bovine. And, um, those women.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks a lot.” He didn’t feel particularly amorous anymore. He just needed a drink of something strong. For that, he invited himself into her kitchen.

  But he’d have to drink it alone, she said. Gypsy needed her, the other wounded cows. When Tim returned from town, Ruth was going back to the orchard—to leave a message for Emily. She had questions to ask her daughter, things to talk over with Moira.

  The silence in her kitchen lunged at him, practically knocked him over. He’d left a bottle of Guckenheimer in her pantry, and it was gone. Who’d been drinking it in his absence—Pete? Damn the s.o.b. He settled for Otter Creek Ale, poured a tepid glassful. Head in his hands, he considered. Ruth was in love with her cows—the fact suddenly struck him. He didn’t have a chance.

  But he supposed he’d go on trying. He’d interview the reverend. He’d talk to those foolish women.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Stan wanted to go home; he tried to communicate this need to Moira, but the words wouldn’t come out. All he could manage was, “Wacomho-o, Moi, geme ow-ere,” and when she looked at him, quizzically, pityingly, he wanted to grab her, shake her. Why couldn’t she understand? He was dying here in this place. Life was passing him by, he was a dead log, shunted to the side of the stream, thrown up on shore to rot.

  She was embracing him now, talking about a woman struck in the back. His car? What woman? He couldn’t think. “Cara, Cara,” he said, weeping, and Moira said, “No, not Carol, Stan: Cassandra. That minister said you deliberately hit her. Ruth and I think he was lying. You didn’t kill her, Stan, I know you didn’t. I want you to get better now, Stan. Work on that physical therapy, come home to the orchard. We need you. I need you.”

  She held him in a grip that almost suffocated him. When he thought he’d never breathe another breath, she let go, turned. “Ta-me,” he cried, “Moir, ta-me,” but she was gone. Only the big nurse was there, the one who’d come to take him to the torture chamber. They would twist his legs, his arms, they would beat and batter him. And he couldn’t complain. He couldn’t talk. He was a dead log. He let himself be strapped into a chair, wheeled off. Out of control.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chief Roy Fallon was sucking on a Pepsi when Colm walked in. It wasn’t a diet Pepsi, either, Colm could see the flaccid belly swell even as the chief drank. “You want to lose your teeth, Roy, you want to get diabetes,” he warned, “you keep on sucking up that sugar.”

  “I’m so far gone now,” Fallon said, “what more can it do?” And he kept on guzzling. “Besides, I like the stuff. What other pleasures I got? The wife’s got religion. The boy’s gone to the city to be an actor. He drives a cab. What the hell?” He laughed that chuk-chuk-chuk laugh of his. Fallon was a hedonist. He’d live to be a hundred in spite of his bad habits: Pepsi-Cola, two martinis at lunch. Cigars.

  “What kind of religion?” Colm asked.

  The chief turned a little pink, as though Colm had hit a nerve. It was a sect. Harmless enough, he was sure, just kooky. “She’s a quester, one of those. Always looking for something new, um .. . she’s on the board of directors, they’re bleeding her. She, um, complains. I think she’s beginning to see the light.”

  “It wouldn’t be those Messengers of Saint Dorothea, would it?”

  “Jesus, yeah, yeah, you got it!” he said, loudly, as though he’d just remembered, and of course he knew. Hadn’t he interrogated that minister after Cassandra Wickham’s death? He was embarrassed because his wife was involved, that was all. But that, too, might be useful. “Messengers of Saint... Christ almighty,” Fallon went on. “A friend got her into it. But just a passing phase. She’s tried everything else. Catholics, Methodists, Unitarians, the synagogue couple times. Now she’s a messenger of Saint Dottie. Dotty as hell.” He guffawed. Chuk-chuk-chuk.

  “Maybe she could help us,” Colm said, and explained his mission. “I want to run a check on that minister. He seems to have a certain charisma, especially for women. I want to know what his background is, where he comes from. He could have been the one who hit that woman, you know. What does he drive for a car? What’s his weak point—money? They tithe, you know, these outfits. Bertha Willmarth—that’s Ruth’s sister-in-law . . . was—pays out a couple grand a year. Oh yes,” he said when Fallon opened his mouth, panicked. “You better keep tabs on your wife. See what she’s putting in the basket each week.”

  Himself, Colm was nominally Catholic. He took in the late show now and then, dropped in a ten and took out a five. The church was wealthy enough, he figured. After all, it owned that Michelangelo ceiling in the Vatican, worth zillions for sure.

  But Fallon didn’t want his wife involved. “She’s on the fence, I told you. Could go either way. Wait a while. But hell, I’ll run a check on whazzisname for you.”

  “Ruth says his surname is Turnbull. Say, is your wife one of those praying ones? Who landed on Samuels’s porch just before he shot himself? I wouldn’t be surprised but what they drove him to it. Just to shut up the prayers.”

  “Prayers help,” said Fallon stiffly. “When I had that heart attack scare, my wife was a Baptist then. She got a bunch of ’em to pray. I got out a week before the doctors thought.”

  Colm had heard of things like that happening. He guessed he shouldn’t berate it. He might need a prayer or two himself one day. Still, one could go too far—especially when the prayers weren’t wanted.

  “Anyhow,” Fallon said, “I want you to, um, leave her to me. We talk. She tells me stuff if I want. I’ll let you, um . . .”

  “Sure. But give me a ring when you find something on Turnbull, okay? I’ve got to talk to him. But I want to do a little homework first.”

  Fallon sighed, and chugalugged his Pepsi. He held up a fresh can. “You should try it, Hanna. You could use a little sweetening.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  Moira was in love with apples, Ruth could see that. She had a large white porcelain bowl on the dining room table with six varieties of apples. “Here’s one of my favorites, the Macoun,” she announced. It was large and bright red. “A dessert apple, highly flavored.” Already she was running into the kitchen for a paper bag. “For you, one each of six kinds,” she said. “I want you to try them, tell me what you think. Of course everyone buys Red Delicious. But have you ever tried the Jonathan?”

  Ruth hadn’t. She accepted the apples, murmured over them. She had other things on her mind. “We had a small incident,” she explained to Moira, trying to look unconcerned. “Some teenagers, we figure, vandals. Knifing three of my cows. Oh, they’re all right,” she said when Moira cried out. “We’re keeping a close watch. Tim’s over there now. I’m bringing them in at night. I only mention it because you might think—”

  “It might stem from that warning?”

  “Yes. But no. Teen vandals, absolutely, Lucien Larocque next door saw one running away. There’s no connection. But even if there were—I mean, I want to help here. Besides, I’ve done all the interviewing already.”

  She told what she’d found out. “Nothing important, really, at least it doesn’t seem so now. Rufus—well, did you know that his grandfather owned this orchard—started it, in fact? That may be something to think about.”

  “Yes,” Moira said, biting into an apple, looking troubled, “that could be a reason for his wanting to own it back. And discourage us from owning it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Then there’s Don Yates. Seems a really nice guy. But...”

  “But?”

  “He knows the orchard. You have to suspect everyone, I guess. Awful to do that, but Don knows his way around this place. He knows apples. Though I don’t see any motive for his destroying them. He did warn us about—well, Opal. Oh, I know she’s Stan’s niece,” Ruth went on hurriedly, “b
ut she was the one who let the goat go. Oh, you didn’t know that?”

  Moira sat still, a chunk of apple in her cheek. “No, I didn’t know. But I can believe it. The first day she was here, she didn’t want any part of the Jamaicans. I don’t know where that prejudice comes from. Certainly not from her father.”

  Ruth shook her head. “Anyway, Don thinks I should talk to Opal. Unless you want to. ...”

  “No, no. You do it. I couldn’t. She wouldn’t talk to me anyway. She’s a strange girl. You don’t suspect her—I mean, hurting your cows?”

  That stopped Ruth a minute. Could it be? Lucien hadn’t actually identified the person, simply described a dark figure. That could be anyone. Lucien’s eyesight was failing, he’d mentioned cataracts a while back. Looking at Moira’s horrified face, she said, “I’m sure not. A woman wouldn’t do that. Why would the girl have a hunting knife?”

  Moira looked relieved. “Of course you’re right. You said teenagers. Teenage boys can be awful. Once Carol was involved with a kid we worried about. She was a small fifteen, he was over six feet, on the wrestling team. She dropped him when she found he was bragging about his relationship with her, saying they were sleeping together when they weren’t. Carol was furious! Then this other boy, Trevor Selleck, the one who killed her ...

  “No, I didn’t mean to say that,” Moira said when Ruth looked up sharply. “That’s the word Stan uses. Trevor was twenty, he’d already graduated. He seemed nice enough, but she was still in high school. He’d been suspended once from school for using drugs—Carol said he’d been sabotaged by his friends. She was always excusing him! And then ... it happened again—alcohol this time.”

  Moira was almost in a trance as she spoke, as though it were all happening for the first time. Ruth watched her carefully, waiting for an explosion but not wanting to stop her. It would be a therapy, talking it out with someone.