Sour Apples (7 page)

Meg stayed where she was until Seth returned to the driveway and climbed out of his car. “What was that all about?” she asked as he approached. Up close Seth looked even more worried.

“Can we go inside?”

“Sure,” Meg said. Within five minutes they were seated around the kitchen table. She took a deep breath, preparing herself for what she figured had to be bad news. “Okay, Seth, what’s going on?”

Seth looked as though he’d rather do anything else than talk about this. “In case you didn’t guess, the man you sent back to see me was Ethan Truesdell, Joyce’s husband. According to Detective Marcus, the autopsy showed that Joyce Truesdell wasn’t killed by an accidental kick—she was murdered.”

“Oh my God, that’s awful! The poor man. I thought he looked pretty ragged. If I’d known, I would have said something to him.” said Meg. “But wait—why was there an autopsy? Was there anything suspicious about the…accident?”

“No, nothing like that. In Massachusetts, any unattended death means there has to be an autopsy. That’s just routine.”

“And the medical examiner found something?”

“You sure you want to hear this? It’s not pretty.”

“The outline, at least.”

“As far as it’s been determined, Joyce was alone in the wooden stall, on a low stool, milking a cow. You should know from your own barn, Meg, just how small that kind of stall is. Not that it was a very big cow—she’s young, and she’s a Guernsey, a breed that runs small anyway. Joyce had plenty of experience with cows and with milking, so she knew what she was doing. That’s not to say that accidents don’t happen, and a small percentage of those are serious.

“The cow had just calved for the first time, and she wasn’t used to being milked—Ethan mentioned that. That’s why Joyce was doing it by hand, which is not the way it’s usually done these days, but she was kind of babying this cow, which was skittish, and apparently she kicked. Again, not unusual. It looked like Joyce fell off the stool when the cow kicked her and hit her head on the side of the stall, hard enough to fracture her skull.”

“What part of that wasn’t an accident?” Meg asked.

“Because there was more than one blow to the head, and the shape of the blows indicates a weapon, not a hoof or a wall. Someone hit her, more than once.”

Meg was stunned into momentary silence, and then a flood of questions emerged. “Wait—who? Why? How do they know?”

“Marcus said that once they saw the autopsy results, he sent someone back to the barn to take a closer look. They found an old metal grain shovel, in plain sight, with minute traces of Joyce’s hair and blood on it. It would have been heavy enough to do what it took. Somebody did a pretty sloppy job of cleaning it up, or assumed nobody would look too closely.”

“No prints?” Meg asked.

“No. Whoever it was probably wore gloves.”

“But why would anyone want Joyce dead?”

Seth shook his head. “I have no idea. There’s no money involved—no fat insurance policy or family inheritance. She and Ethan had sunk everything they had into the dairy operation, which was just beginning to show a decent profit. And of course Ethan is the first person the state police are looking at as a suspect.”

“How does he benefit?” Meg pressed.

“He doesn’t, as far as anyone can tell. He seems pretty broken up about losing her. In any case, he says he has an alibi. He was out of town, picking up some equipment, and he didn’t get back until Sunday morning, which is when he found his wife’s body. He has a receipt from the motel he stayed at.”

“He could have sneaked back in the middle of the night, couldn’t he?”

Seth shrugged. “It’s possible. But it looks as though Joyce had finished up most of the milking—except for that one cow—when she was killed, and that cow was pretty miserable by morning. So if Joyce was doing the milking at the usual time, then someone surprised her between five and six on Saturday night. Probably closer to six, since all the other cows had been taken care of. She must have been saving the little Guernsey for last so she could take her time
with her. But that’s not to say that Ethan couldn’t have come back, then left again.”

Meg sat back in her chair. “So what does that mean? Nobody benefits from Joyce’s death, including the obvious suspect, her husband, who has an alibi anyway. So who would kill her? Are you saying there’s some madman on the loose in Granford?”

Seth gave her a cheerless smile. “Let’s hope not.”

“So why was Marcus here, telling you? You’re not involved.”

“Tangentially, apparently, I am. Joyce seems to have led a blameless life. The only wild card here is her dispute with the town about that pasture she leased from Granford. When Marcus talked to Ethan the first time, he mentioned Joyce’s complaint. Marcus figured Ethan was pretty shook up and rambling. Now that he knows it was murder, though, he’s got to take another look at all possible motives, and that’s where I come in, as part of the town government. You remember, I promised Joyce that I’d check the history of that plot of land, but I haven’t had the time. Which is what I told Marcus.”

“It seems kind of far-fetched as a motive for murder.”

“He’s just being thorough, which is appropriate. It’s the only issue Joyce appears to have had with anyone—otherwise she was a model citizen. Filed all the right paperwork, paid her taxes, ran a clean operation. It makes no sense at all that someone would want to kill her.”

Seth sat silently for a moment before asking, “Was there anything else you wanted?”

Meg debated for a moment. Obviously Seth wasn’t in the best of moods, but on the other hand, Bree would skin her alive if she didn’t at least talk to him about using his land. “Actually, there’s something I need to discuss with you. Nothing bad,” she added hastily.

“What is it?”

Meg took a deep breath. “Bree wants a decision about whether we’re going to expand the orchard this year. Does your offer to use the field up there still stand?”

“Sure. I told you it did, and I’d love to see it put to good use. How much are you thinking about?”

Meg pushed Bree’s diagram across the table toward him. “We’ve got fifteen acres planted now, and we thought maybe we could add another two or three? It’ll take some clearing, and we’ll probably end up doing a lot of the work ourselves, and we don’t want to get overextended. But the new trees won’t bear fruit for a couple of years, so that’s
kind of a gradual phase-in.” Meg stopped herself because she realized she was babbling.

But Seth was smiling. “Whatever you want. I probably won’t even notice those three acres—that section isn’t visible from my house or my mother’s anyway. Go for it.”

“Great! So I can tell Bree to move forward? She’s itching to get started, and we’ll have to plant soon if we’re going to do it this year. Oh, and do you have a recent survey of the land? And we should draw up a lease agreement—I can’t afford to buy it right now, not if I’m going to improve it.”

Seth smiled at her. “Fine, if it makes you happy, although I wouldn’t insist on it.”

“I’m running a business, and I appreciate your trust, but I want to keep this on a business footing.”

“No problem.”

“Thanks, Seth.”

“My pleasure.”

Meg smiled at him. “Speaking of land, can you tell me more about this land arrangement with the Truesdells? If you don’t mind talking about it, that is.”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Seth said. “You only met Joyce once, right?”

“Yes, that time she was here.”

Seth went on, “Joyce was the driving force behind the dairy business, and Ethan seems to have gone along with whatever she wanted. But Joyce wasn’t all starry-eyed about it, and she knew how to run a business. They’ve done reasonably well, enough so that she wanted to buy or lease the property that adjoins her farm as grazing land—all her cows are grass fed. So she came to the assemblymen and asked. The town owns that land and we didn’t have a problem with that, and we worked out a lease arrangement. We didn’t go into the whole history of that piece of land, but there was definitely a title search in the file. There was an implied promise that she could buy it sometime in the future, but Joyce was happy enough with the lease
arrangement. So last year she started improving the land for grazing.”

“What do you mean, ‘improving’? I didn’t know you had to do anything beyond growing grass,” Meg said.

“It’s a little more complicated than that, though I don’t really know the details. Plus she had to put up fencing and clear out some brush. Nothing major. But then this spring she let the cows out to graze—and they started getting sick.”

“That’s what she was so upset about the other day, right?”

“Exactly. Of course, after the first couple of cows started looking bad, she pulled all of them off the field, but one died anyway. That’s when she came to me, because she thought the problem had to have something to do with the land.”

“I don’t know anything about cattle or grazing. What can make them sick?”

“Me either, but I gather there are a lot of possibilities. It could be a disease. Or it could be something in the soil. There are plants that can be toxic, or even eating too much too fast. Joyce was careful and well-informed. When she was here the other day, she told me she had sent blood and soil samples off to the appropriate labs. Apparently whoever did the blood work owed her a favor, and she received the report fast—and then she came straight to me.”

“So the lab found something?”

Seth nodded. “Lead poisoning. Apparently cows are particularly susceptible to lead.”

“Where on earth would they have gotten into lead?”

“We don’t know—yet. It could be something as simple as someone dumping an old car battery in the field—cows are sometimes dumb enough to lick them, believe it or not. But I would think that Joyce was pretty thorough about checking for things like that when she cleaned up the land.”

“What do you know about that property?”

“Not a lot. I guess I’m going to have to find out.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“I doubt it. If there’s any possibility that this might involve a legal action, then the town attorney should handle it. I don’t even know what kind of liability we have under the lease, but he helped draw it up.”

“So what did Ethan want today?”

“I’m not sure. It seemed like he just wanted to vent. I don’t think he and Joyce had made a lot of friends around here, mainly because they were so busy. I’d guess he doesn’t have a lot of people to turn to.”

Meg poured him some more coffee. Seth nodded his thanks, then resumed. “Like I told you, he’s the one who found Joyce, and that hit him hard. He hasn’t had time to think about what he’s going to do with the dairy operation, but if he wants to sell the place, he’d still have to have this problem with the sick cows sorted out, especially now that it’s public knowledge—if I count as the public. But he still hasn’t received the results of the soil tests. In any case, he’s keeping the pressure up on me and the town, and I can’t say that I blame him. I’m sorry if he startled you, showing up at your door like that.”

Would Nicky know more? Meg wondered. When they’d talked at the Spring Fling, it had sounded as though Nicky and Joyce had spent some time together. “Seth, the man is clearly hurting. What’re you going to do?”

“As I said, turn the problem over to the town attorney and find the rest of the files when I have a chance.” He looked at his watch. “Shoot, I’ve got to get going. Thanks for the coffee, Meg. When is Lauren coming back?”

“Sometime later today, but I don’t know what time. Are you asking because you want to see her or to avoid her?”

“I like her fine, as long as she doesn’t talk about Rick Sainsbury.”

“It’s her new big thing, so it may be hard to separate the two right now. You know, she did pick up on your hostility toward him. What should I tell her if she asks me about it?”

“That it’s personal, not political. I have no idea what his qualifications for office might be, and I don’t particularly want to find out. Just please tell her not to try to win me over, will you?”

Meg nodded. “Understood. And thanks again for offering to let me use your land—Bree and I’ll get moving on that. I think she’s already got a timeline laid out for it.”

“Maybe I should reserve naming rights as part of the deal. Chapin’s Acres? Seth’s Parcel? Seriously, I’m happy to help out. I want to see you succeed.”

“I’m working on it.” Meg ducked in for a quick kiss, then shoved him toward the door.

As she cleaned up the last of the breakfast dishes, Meg reflected that what Seth had reported about the sickened cows was troubling. It never would have occurred to her to wonder if the very soil under her feet was safe, but she had to admit she knew little about the history of her own land. Luckily, she had good records for the last twenty years or so, when the university had been managing the orchard, and she knew that they had been careful to avoid using toxic chemicals; she had just assumed that they had done any necessary testing. After all, she was sure Christopher Ramsdell, the agricultural studies professor who had overseen her orchard, had been a conscientious steward of the land. Of course, there had been an orchard in the corner of the property for centuries. Who knew what previous generations had used, and how long the substances lingered? Should she have her land tested? Should she have Seth’s land tested, before she committed time and effort to using it?