A Killer Crop (27 page)

He looked up from the column of figures he was adding. “Hi, Meg. To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” Max came over to sniff her shoes.

“In case you saw the other car in the driveway earlier, I wanted to let you know that my father has arrived.”

“Ah.” Seth swiveled in his chair to look at her and leaned back. “Is that a good thing?”

“Looks like it. He and my mother were headed off to talk to Detective Marcus this afternoon, and I think we’re going to Gran’s again for dinner. Look, I want him to meet you, but . . .”

“You need some time alone with him, with them, before you throw me at him? Not a problem.”

“Thank you. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” Again. “Tomorrow, maybe?”

“Let me know what the plans are, and I’ll see.”

Meg felt awkward, leaving things on that note. “Did Art say anything else to you?”

Seth shook his head. “Haven’t talked to him since this morning. But you know, if—and that’s still a big if—the break-ins at Weston’s place and your place were by the same person, that person is probably looking for something in particular.”

“That’s about what I figured, but I have no clue what. Or why. Or where it could be, if it exists. Or who wants it. Not a lot to go on, is it?”

“Let Marcus do his job.” Seth stood up, crossed to Meg, and kissed her briefly. “Go and spend some time with your parents. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Right. And thanks for understanding.”

 

 

Gran’s was comfortably filled again that evening—there were enough diners chatting that Meg didn’t feel they had to watch what they said, for fear of a neighbor overhearing. Not that there was much to say that could be construed as private.

“I was impressed with the detective,” Phillip was saying as he enjoyed Nicky’s rich butternut squash soup. “All business. Well informed—but clearly frustrated by his lack of progress. It’s been, what, ten days now since Daniel died? I take it you know this detective, Meg?”

“Mmmm.” Meg suppressed a shudder. Despite their recent truce, those had been less than happy circumstances. “But I agree. Generally he’s fair, and he works hard. What did you tell him?”

“I apologized for not returning his calls and told him why. We talked about how I knew Daniel, and when I’d seen him last. It had been decades, hasn’t it, Elizabeth?” He turned to his wife.

She nodded. “Since before he married Patricia. You never met her, did you, Phillip?”

“Not that I can recall. Poor Daniel—I never would have foreseen something like this.”

“Are you saying he’s not the kind of person you would expect to find murdered?” Meg asked.

“I suppose that’s part of it. When we knew him, he was a very happy person—loved what he was working on, loved spending time with his friends. Definitely not the kind of person who would inspire someone to kill him.”

“Do you think he changed much?”

“Elizabeth?” Phillip turned to her. “You spent some time with him. What was your assessment?”

“Looking back now, I’d have to say he was perhaps a bit more driven than in the past. After all, he was reaching the end of his career—which by all accounts was successful—but Patricia seemed to think he was hoping for one last hurrah before he retired. Maybe he was onto something, or thought he was. What isn’t clear is whether he found what he was looking for. Which may be the same thing the burglar is looking for.”

“And yet no one knows what it was. Curious.”

“But was it worth killing for?” Meg interrupted. “Although I have to say I’m constantly surprised by what drives people to extremes—things that may seem trivial or irrelevant to others. Everyone keeps telling us that he was a nice guy, people liked him, he was successful at his job, happy in his marriage. So why is he dead?”

“A fair question, my dear. At the risk of sounding like an attorney, perhaps we should ask: who benefits from his death?”

Elizabeth said slowly, “From what little Patricia has said, she doesn’t, or not in any significant way—she gets the house and whatever insurance there was, but no million-dollar policies. Apparently his children are well established. The department at the college doesn’t benefit, because they’ve got a hole to fill in the faculty right at the beginning of the school term. A professional colleague maybe? Someone who didn’t want to see Daniel succeed where they had failed? Some of them were coming to Amherst for this symposium. Including one of his rivals, Kenneth Henderson, who says they were on friendly terms, which both Patricia and Susan, Daniel’s graduate student, say was not true.”

“Still, the timing is suggestive,” Phillip replied. “And this mysterious ‘find’ of his—would it have monetary value? Or was it simply a matter of prestige?”

“It’s hard to say, since we don’t know what it is,” Meg replied. “Tell me, Dad, was he the type to play jokes? I mean, was he just building up this thing when maybe it didn’t even exist?”

“Do you know, I have some questions about that,” Elizabeth said. “He never mentioned it to me, although I don’t know why he would have. Of course, he hadn’t seen me in years, so we talked about ourselves and our families.”

“Changing tacks, your mother mentioned that you had a break-in last night,” Phillip parried. “And so did the Westons, the night before. Let’s work with the assumption that they’re related. Say someone was looking for something in your house.”

“But what? Nothing was taken.”

“Whoever it was didn’t expect to find Max there,” Elizabeth added, warming to the subject.

“But that would imply that whoever it was knew I
didn’t
have a dog,” Meg protested. “And this person gave up pretty easily—I mean, Max wouldn’t hurt a fly, and the burglar could have just shoved him out the door and gone on with his business. He didn’t.”

“That suggests an amateur,” Phillip said. “The question is, what was this person looking for?”

“Meg,” Elizabeth said slowly, “the only thing that might have been taken was my genealogy notes. I know that seems silly, but what if there was something in them that the intruder wanted?” She turned to Phillip. “I was spending some time looking at our family history,” Elizabeth said, “and the people who built and who lived in our house. I’ve really only gotten started, but I’ve been enjoying it, more than I expected. I had printed out a lot of bits and pieces, but I hadn’t had time to make any sense of them.”

“You’ve been known to misplace things, my love,” Phillip replied.

He and Elizabeth exchanged another fond glance that shut Meg out again briefly. “Wait a minute—didn’t you say you’d found some connection between Emily Dickinson and the Granford Dickinsons?” she asked.

“Yes, but only very distantly.”

“But think about it. Everything keeps coming back to the Dickinsons—Emily, Dickinson’s Farm Stand, local Dickinson families. And you said we’re related to Emily?”

“Yes, but it’s something ridiculous like fifth cousins five times removed, from what I’ve found so far. It’s not anything like a lineal relationship.”

“Listen to you—you’ve already picked up the jargon,” Meg said. “What about the other Granford Dickinsons? Were they closer relatives?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I can’t say yet. I’m pretty new to all of this, and I’ve just begun to follow the family lines. I’d say no closer than second or third cousins.”

Phillip cleared his throat and raised his hand to tick off his points. “This is all very interesting, Meg, but where does it get us? One, Daniel Weston, noted Dickinson scholar, was killed. Two, he was murdered at Dickinson’s Farm Stand in the middle of the night. Coincidence? Maybe. Three, some of his fellow scholars were in Amherst for a conference he had organized—which featured Emily Dickinson. Four, he hinted that he had a new discovery to announce, which we might infer relates to Emily Dickinson, his area of specialization. Five, his house was broken into after his death, and the focus was his study. Six, your house was broken into as well and nothing was taken, save perhaps some notes that might or might not have included information on the extended Dickinson family.”

“I’m so glad we have a lawyer in our midst,” Meg said sarcastically.

“I’m also a fresh eye,” her father reminded her.

“That you are. So your theory is that Daniel wanted something related to Emily Dickinson that he was pretty sure existed, and someone thought it, or something leading to it, might be in my house?”

“Exactly.”

“So what do we do now?” Meg tried to envision explaining all this to Detective Marcus and quickly abandoned the idea. “Are we supposed to start hunting for this whatever-it-is? We don’t even know what we’re looking for. If it ever existed,” she ended dubiously.

“Apparently Daniel thought, as the mystery burglar may, that there’s a chance it still exists. Let me ask you this: if an Emily Dickinson artifact popped up, what would be its monetary value?”

“I have no idea. I’d guess we could look at recent auctions on the Internet, or talk to someone at one of the places that holds her collections.”

“Or it might not have been about the monetary value,” Elizabeth added. “It might have been about the glory of finding something unknown. I really think Daniel would have cared more about that.”

“Which points toward someone who might want the money, if they could sell whatever it is, or toward his professional colleagues, who would prefer the glory of an important discovery,” Phillip concluded.

“Exactly,” Meg said.

“We should examine that assumption,” Phillip said.

Elizabeth looked at Meg and grimaced. “Phillip, you’re being lawyerly again.”

“That’s what I do,” he replied mildly. “The wife—Patricia?—would no doubt have been a prime suspect for the police. After your mother, of course.” He winked at Elizabeth, who swatted his arm affectionately. “Detective Marcus told us they’d looked into Daniel’s finances and found nothing unusual, correct?”

Meg nodded.

“So apparently she didn’t need the money, although she might have wanted more. They also looked for any hint of sexual misconduct from Daniel and found nothing. My, Daniel sounds rather dull, doesn’t he? He must have mellowed since we knew him. What other motive might Patricia have had?”

“She was mildly jealous of Emily Dickinson,” Elizabeth said. “She told me so, although she might have been joking. She did think that Daniel was obsessed by her. Maybe Patricia got tired of hearing about Emily all the time and killed him, since it was too late to kill Emily.”

Phillip shook his head. “While I’ll concede that you may have better insight into her state of mind, I don’t see why she would have lured him to the farm stand in the middle of the night.”

“I agree—it seems a rather odd choice. Could she have done it to confuse the police? To point attention away from her? It’s certainly kept us all guessing,” Meg said. “If I’d been in her shoes, I would have dumped him at Emily’s house, or next to her grave in the cemetery. Although maybe both were too public, in the middle of town—somebody would have noticed her hauling a body around. Still, she seemed honestly upset about his death, and I don’t think she was acting. Does that help or hurt her as a potential suspect?”

“Hard to say. Let’s trust that the police have done their homework on her. Now, what about his peers?”

“Kenneth Henderson is the only one we’ve met, but he’s a possibility. We know he was in the area, and we know they had a long-term rivalry. Susan told us that it was more than a friendly competition. But he wouldn’t know about the farm stand, unless Daniel took him there, and why would he?” Elizabeth asked.

“Now who’s grasping at straws?” Meg chided her father. “What about the break-in at Patricia’s? You’d have to assume that either Kenneth did that, too, or that Patricia staged it to shift suspicion away from herself. And don’t forget all the people who showed up at the memorial service. The police probably looked at them, too—isn’t that standard procedure?”

“We both remember seeing Kenneth there,” Elizabeth said. “And he seemed very solicitous of Patricia, even though he said he didn’t know her. Maybe they were in on it together?”

Phillip was clearly enjoying this exchange. “Or let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Kenneth had grown tired of this constant contest with Daniel, so he came up early and scouted out locations for murder. Maybe he, too, was feeling his advancing years and wanted to commit the perfect crime before he retired.”

“Phillip!” Elizabeth protested. “That’s absurd.”

“Dad, don’t even joke about it. That sounds like a bad TV movie. Murder is serious stuff.”

Phillip looked contrite, and patted her hand. “I’m sorry, Meg. We shouldn’t be taking Daniel’s death as a joke. So, where were we? His colleagues, both at the college and those who had assembled for his vaunted symposium.”

“We don’t know them. That’s something the police can handle better than we can. I’m not exactly chummy with the state police, but I know they haven’t arrested anybody. There’s just no evidence, or not enough.” Meg sighed. “This hasn’t gotten us very far, has it?”