Sour Apples (26 page)

“You two want some alone time?” Bree asked. “I get the feeling you’ve got things to talk about. I can keep busy in the barn for a while.”

“I guess. Seth’d be happier if I weren’t involved at all, and he’s not real thrilled that his mother’s involved in this, too.”

“Awww…I think it’s kind of sweet that he’s looking out for you both.”

“Do you think he’s any better equipped to protect us than we are to protect ourselves?” Meg was surprised at how annoyed she was. “This is not the nineteenth century. What’s he going to do, sit on the stoop with a shotgun? Threaten to beat up anybody who shows up?” And he was
still hiding whatever issue he had with Rick, Meg added to herself. Where did that fit?

“I think it’s kind of cute,” Bree said. “Go on, let him do his chest-thumping thing. And in a way he’s right—better to be safe than sorry. I’ll be in the barn if you need me.”

“Right,” Meg said dubiously as she started down the hill. Once she was in earshot of Seth, she called out, “Did you stop at your mother’s? I’m surprised you didn’t leave Max with her.”

“Mom read me the riot act about being overprotective. She said I’m being ridiculous. Then she went over to Rachel’s house. She didn’t even offer to feed me.”

“Poor baby,” Meg replied. “Did you talk to Marcus?”

“We did.”

“And?”

“Can we take this inside?” Seth asked.

“Sure. And bring Max in, too. He’s getting the goats riled up.”

“I think he’s lonely. I’m not giving him enough attention these days.” Seth whistled. “Come on, Max, come here.” Max complied, wagging a lot of body parts, and Seth rubbed his head vigorously, to the dog’s delight.

Meg unlocked the door and let man and dog in, which also sent Lolly back to the top of the refrigerator. “Dinnertime, isn’t it, Lolly? Seth, does Max need anything? I’ve got a bag of kibble.”

“Go ahead and feed him so he won’t try to eat Lolly’s dinner.”

As Meg fed the animals, she asked, “How about you? Hungry? I can give you leftovers.”

“That’ll do.”

After the animals ate, Lolly disappeared and Max flopped down on the floor next to Seth, his tongue hanging out. Meg settled two plates of reheated leftovers on the table for her and Seth, and sat across from him. “So, did Marcus believe you?”

He ate a few bites before answering. “Hard to say. I’m glad Art and I went together. I told Marcus about what Joyce had told me, and what we thought
might
have happened. I gave him the copies of the town records and the soil reports you printed out, although since the samples weren’t collected by anyone ‘official’ as part of the murder investigation, they’re not really evidence. Art told him about the break-ins and how the timing fit. Marcus played Great Stone Face and said he’d consider our information. End of story.”

“Did you tell him what we suspect about Rick Sainsbury’s involvement?”

Seth leaned back in his chair, avoiding her eyes. “Meg, all we have is a lot of guesses. I didn’t feel I should drag Sainsbury into this until we actually know something. If Lauren comes up with anything relevant, I’ll pass that on to Marcus.”

“So the short answer is, no, you didn’t point a finger at Rick Sainsbury,” Meg said. She wondered briefly if Seth was trying too hard to avoid any appearance of animosity toward his old football teammate. At what cost? She sighed. “You think Marcus is going to do something? Or was that a brush-off?”

Seth shrugged. “I don’t know. You know he doesn’t like outside interference.”

Meg did know, all too well—that was why she and Marcus had gotten off to a rather rocky start, although things had improved since. She decided to tackle the other issue that had been bothering her more and more, head-on. “Seth, why don’t you like Rick? You’ve been dancing around this from the beginning. I can understand being discreet, but don’t you think it’s time to share? Please don’t tell me it’s not my business. This is me, remember? Talk to me!”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes!”

Seth pushed his chair away from the table and sat back.
“Rick Sainsbury was the star quarterback on the football team, a senior during my first year on the JV team, and you can imagine how little contact we had, but the team was pretty good overall—went to the state finals.”

“Sounds as though Rick wouldn’t have known who you were, if you were a lowly freshman,” Meg commented.

“He didn’t, but I knew who he was. The varsity team, particularly the seniors, were like gods to us. We were honored if they even nodded to us in the hallway. The football team was a big deal in high school, particularly when they were winning and the town didn’t have a lot else to be proud of. So we all kind of looked up to the guys on the team, and by and large they were good guys.”

“So why the hostility?” Meg said, mystified. “You’re saying Rick
wasn’t
a good guy?”

Seth sighed and ignored her question. “The quarterback was the top of the heap. But Rick played it to the hilt and took advantage of people. He used his position as a football hero to slide through his classes—not that he was dumb, but he always took the easy way out, and the teachers let him, more often than not. There were plenty of kids who were happy to do his homework for him, or the research for his papers. Look, I know all this seems really petty, and I wouldn’t make too much of it.”

“But?” Meg prompted. To set Seth off like this, there had to be more.

“The final straw for me was during one of the last games of the year. We had the conference championship locked up, so it didn’t matter whether we won or lost that game. Not that anyone expected us to lose, and we were ahead like twenty points in the third quarter. And then Rick made a tackle that really laid a guy out. Okay, that happens. But Rick was the quarterback, so it wasn’t really his job. What made it worse was what happened when the guy was already on the ground and the play was over.”

“What did he do?” Meg prompted.

“Rick hit him, just to be sure he stayed down. Not once, but a couple of times—really vicious hits. The other guy ended up with a couple of broken ribs and a punctured lung. Either the refs never saw it, because Rick was surrounded by his loyal teammates, or if they did, nobody said a word.”

“Was this kind of behavior a pattern or a one-time thing?”

“I was beginning to wonder if
I
had really seen it, but I ran into Rick in the locker room the week after and I said something like, ‘Hey, you really nailed that guy on the field,’ just to see what he’d say, and he looked me in the eye and said, ‘That’s how you stop them and win—remember that.’”

“So you’re saying that it was deliberate and he didn’t see anything wrong with what he’d done. And that he knew that you knew. Okay, but still, that was a long time ago. Why is he courting you now?”

Seth drained his coffee mug. “I don’t know. That was the last conversation I had with Rick Sainsbury until the Spring Fling last week. Maybe he’s changed just enough that he now realizes why it would look bad, and wants to keep tabs on me, to make sure I don’t go spreading that story around. Or maybe he’s forgotten about the whole episode and thinks I can do him some good politically.”

Both good possibilities, Meg thought. “He didn’t stick around Granford after high school?”

“No, he got a football scholarship to a Big Ten school and never looked back. But I know he didn’t play football long. You’ve seen him—he’s not big enough to make it in the pros. After college he got an MBA, I heard, and then he took over his father’s company. You already know most of this.”

Meg thought for a moment. “So what you’re saying is, based on what you saw of Rick Sainsbury in high school, you think that he plays dirty?”

“He did then. I don’t know the man now, and that’s why
I haven’t wanted to say anything. And I know Mom respected his father, which is another reason I’ve kept quiet. Rick may have changed. I mean, high school wasn’t the best time for a lot of us, and most people had a few rough edges that needed to be knocked off. But there’s something else that’s bothering me now…” Seth stopped.

“What?”

“He’s brought in several of the guys he played football with back then, to work on the campaign. You saw them in that newspaper article the other day.”

Meg stood up and went to the stack of papers to be recycled, waiting by the door to the shed. A couple of layers down she pulled out the issue that Seth had seen, and tossed the paper onto the table. “That’s the group you mean?”

“That’s them.”

Getting Seth to say anything negative about anyone was like pulling teeth, Meg thought. He’d probably say that Jack the Ripper had unresolved anger-management issues. “Why does that matter?”

Seth sat back in his chair and absently rubbed Max’s head. “Obviously you never played high school football. The seniors and some of the juniors on that team were tight. Rick was the hero, the leader, and these other guys were his adoring slaves.”

“And what, Seth? Did they lead a reign of terror at the high school? Torture the nerds? Sexually harass the cheerleaders? What were they guilty of?”

Seth sat forward again, leaning his forearms on the table. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to talk about it. High school is such a difficult time for a lot of people, and our judgment is not the best then. For the record, I never had a problem with these guys. Maybe I was exempt because I was a decent football player. And maybe I was jealous. I mean, these guys radiated this sense of entitlement, like they ruled the world and knew it. Which meant they thought they could get away with anything, and sometimes they did. The bottom
line is, back then they would have done
anything
to protect and impress Rick. I’m afraid that might still be true.”

Meg remembered her own high school days: she’d been all but invisible, but she’d been aware of the Golden Girls, the cheerleaders who were popular and even smart. They’d always seemed to shine so bright, a little larger than life. But she’d been clueless about how the male side of things operated. “Okay, I’ll accept that your perspective may be biased by your youth and everyone’s general hormonal excesses. That said, where is the problem now?”

“Because from what little I’ve heard, these other guys—Cook, DuPont, Ferriter, Dressel—they’re kind of thugs now. I haven’t exactly followed their careers, but I’ve seen some of their names pop up on arrest reports in the local paper. Minor stuff, but it adds up. Rick’s the only one who’s done well for himself. The others never got far from Granford. So when their former hero calls and says, ‘Hey, come join me,’ they jump.”

Meg began to understand where he was going with this. “And you think they’d still be willing to do almost anything for him all these years later?”

“Maybe.”

“Seth, how did this get so messed up?”

“I wish I knew. Joyce came to me with a legitimate complaint—otherwise I might not have known anything about that, and neither would anyone else. But since I did know about her concerns, I got sucked into the investigation and pulled you in, too. I’m sorry, Meg.”

“For what? Joyce visited your place of business. And my friend—or maybe ex-friend—Lauren happens to be working for Rick Sainsbury, who may or may not be connected. Pure coincidence. I’m involved through no fault of yours. Stop taking on responsibility for everything, will you?”

Seth smiled. “You sound like my mother. She said something like that when I tried to apologize to her. She said she and my father had been involved with the Sainsburys since
I was a kid and that it had nothing to do with me. And then she sent me over here to make it right with you.”

“Smart woman, Lydia. I like her.”

“And she likes you.”

“I’m glad to hear that. So now what?” Meg asked.

Bree came bustling in from the barn. “Michael called and says he wants to see this indie movie in Amherst, so I said I’d tag along. Don’t wait up, you guys.” Before Meg could respond, Bree was out the door again.

“There’s one more thing I should apologize for,” Seth began again when Bree was gone.

“What, there’s anything left?”

“I should have told you from the beginning why I don’t like Rick. I guess in part it was out of respect for my mother’s opinion of the family.”

“I wish you had shared, but that’s water under the bridge. We don’t know for a fact that he has any knowledge or involvement in any of this. I can tell you that the man rubbed me the wrong way from the moment I laid eyes on him. Although it does sound like he has leadership abilities and brains, he’s still too obviously a politician. But where would murder fit?”

“Good question,” Seth said. “That sense of entitlement again? ‘I want this and somebody’s in my way, so I’ll just get rid of that person’?”

“That’s pretty cold, don’t you think?” Meg responded. “You think he’d stop at nothing to get his way?”

“Maybe. I guess I was hoping that Lauren would be an ally, but that sounds unlikely.”

“Sure does. Not that I can blame her. I mean, I see her for the first time in months, and then I accuse her new boss of being involved in a murder? I just hope when she takes the time to think about it, she’ll see where I was coming from. I really am trying to help.”

“I know,” Seth said.

Meg stood up to clear the table, carrying the dishes to
the sink. Seth came up behind her and kissed her neck. “I’ve missed you. I know we’ve seen each other every day, but we’ve both been busy. That’s a lousy excuse.” His arms tightened around her.

Meg pivoted to face him. “It’s not easy, is it? Trying to find time for ‘us’?” She pulled his face to hers and kissed him, a kiss that spun out, driving out anything resembling coherent thought.

Until the doorbell rang.

Seth muttered a curse. “Can you ignore it?”

Meg shook her head. “It’s the front door. Nobody ever comes to the front door, so it could be important. I’d better check. But mark our place, will you?” Reluctantly she peeled away from him and headed for the front door.

She was surprised when she opened it to see Lauren. But even more surprised that right behind her stood Rick Sainsbury.

While Meg gaped, Lauren said, “May we come in?”