A Killer Crop (34 page)

“All right, then,” Meg said. “Mother, you and I can take the front bedrooms. Bree, you check your own room, and Daddy, can you take the fourth? Seth, you’re on call if we find a likely place. And it shouldn’t be anything where we’d need a crowbar, right?”

“No crowbars,” Seth agreed. “But maybe a box knife or a putty knife—there may be a lot of paint layers to get through. We’re looking for someplace a girl could access without too much difficulty, but possibly cleverly hidden. So let’s go.”

Swabbing the last of the eggs from her plate, Meg said, “I agree. We have only an hour or so before Susan arrives, and I guess I’d like to know before she gets here.” Although, she realized, if they found nothing, would she still report her suspicions to the police? They had so little to go on. It would be better to gauge Susan’s reactions before taking it any further.

Meg headed toward the front bedroom that she had been using, while her mother went to the guest room across the hall. If Seth had guessed correctly, Meg’s room had been the master bedroom; the adjacent bathroom filled what had once been a nursery. She had mixed feelings about this hunt: she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to find anything or not. In her room she stood in the center and turned in a full circle, studying the structure. The plaster walls were original and intact, so she could eliminate those. There was what was laughingly called a closet, less than a hanger’s width deep, ringed inside with Victorian iron hooks. Another of Eli’s additions? Outside her room in the hall, the adjoining space was filled by an equally shallow bookcase set into the wall, so there was little room left over to conceal a box. The baseboards offered some possibilities, but most were single board lengths and, judging by the layers of paint, hadn’t been moved in decades. Surely young Ellen wouldn’t have been moving ten-foot boards around? That left the floor.

Many of the wide floorboards were long, almost the full length of the room, but in some cases there were short pieces at the edges, extending under the baseboards. Meg sat down on the floor and contemplated the short bits. The boards were about eight inches wide, maybe two feet long, and were held in by a couple of old nails on the end closer to her. She dug a fingernail under the nearest one and found it firmly attached. She slid over to the next one: the same thing. The board was rock solid.

There was only one left, at the front corner of the room, one board in from the edge. Funny, this one seemed to be missing any nails, and there was a small irregular notch on the near end of the board, which her finger fit neatly into. She pried up the board, dislodging a century’s worth of caked dirt, and slid it out. Between the joists nestled a rectangular wooden box with carved initials: ESW.

Meg sat back on her heels and drew a long breath before calling out, “Hey, guys? I think I’ve got something.”

Her mother was the first to arrive, from across the hall. “You found something?” She stopped in her tracks when she saw the dusty hole in the floor in front of Meg. Bree, following Elizabeth, all but bumped into her.

“So it appears,” Meg responded, her eyes still on the box. “From the layer of dust on it, I’d say nobody’s handled this for quite a while.”

“Should we touch it?” Elizabeth leaned over Meg for a closer look. “Or maybe we should take some photos first, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“Well, it could be evidence in a murder investigation.”

“I doubt the box itself is. As I said, it hasn’t been touched for a very long time. If this had something to do with Daniel’s death, it’s only because someone
wanted
to find it, and obviously they didn’t. But sure, why not take pictures? We might need to establish provenance.”

“Huh?” Bree said.

“If there’s any question about the source of . . . whatever might be inside, we should document where we found it,” Meg said.

Phillip and Seth were the last to join the group, and Meg’s bedroom was crowded now, with everyone staring over Meg’s shoulder. “I’ll get my camera,” Bree volunteered, and went down the hall to her room.

Meg found to her surprise that she was reluctant to take the next step. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to find. If Emily’s letters were there, what would it mean? And if they weren’t, did that mean Daniel died for nothing?

Bree returned with a small digital camera. Meg stood up, brushing the dust bunnies off the seat of her pants, and stepped back to give her a clear view. Bree snapped a variety of shots—wide shots showing the corner of the room and close-ups showing the box with its undisturbed dust. Then she retreated and said, “Well, isn’t anybody going to open it?”

Meg hesitated. “Mother, do you want to do the honors? It’s your house, too.”

“Sweetheart, you found it. I think you should have that privilege.”

Meg knelt down. The group waited silently as she reached into the void and pulled out the box. It was solidly made, with a simple brass clasp on the front. Meg could hear some small objects shifting around inside as she lifted it. “If there is anything valuable inside, we should be careful how we open it—you know, wash our hands, open it in a clean area.”

“The dining room table,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll go clear it off.”

After she left, the rest of them stood around awkwardly. Meg still held the box, unsure what to do next. It felt kind of ridiculous to be so uncertain. It was just a box, after all, and it probably held a few simple trinkets, of historical interest but no particular value. Why didn’t she believe that? Because Daniel was dead.

“Shall we?” Her father gestured toward the door, and Meg finally moved, followed by Bree and Seth. Downstairs, her mother had cleared off the tabletop and spread out a sheet. Meg set the box down, and they all stood in a circle around the table and stared at it.

They were interrupted by a knock at the front door. Meg jumped at the sound. “That must be Susan. Do we tell her?”

“I think we have to. Don’t you?” Elizabeth replied.

Meg nodded, then went to the door. When she opened it, Susan took one look at her dusty clothes and said, “You’ve been searching.” Then she saw Meg’s face. “You found something!”

Meg stepped back to let Susan pass, and she made a beeline for the table, oblivious to the others in the room. “Oh,” she breathed. “I can’t believe it. It’s real.” Then she looked at the others. “You haven’t opened it?”

“We just found it.”

Susan looked at Meg with an obvious plea, but Meg was reluctant to give up first rights. Her house, her discovery. Her parents’ friend, dead. This was something she realized that she wanted, needed to do herself.

“I’m just going to wash my hands first,” she said, escaping to the kitchen. Seth followed. “You okay with all this?” he asked her.

Meg kept her eyes on her hands, soaping them, rinsing, drying, slowly and carefully. “I feel weird about it. I mean, what are we going to find in there? And regardless, how on earth did Emily Dickinson and a murder somehow come together—even theoretically—in this house?”

“Hard to say, but nothing surprises me, particularly where old houses are concerned. They’ve probably witnessed a lot more than we suspect.”

“Nothing new under the sun, eh?” Meg produced a wavering smile for him. “Then let’s do it.”

In the dining room, the other three had closed ranks, flanking Susan. To restrain her from running off with the box? Meg had brought a clean towel with her from the kitchen, and gently wiped the encrusted dust from the box. “No lock, just the latch,” she said. She took a breath, then slipped the latch from its loop and opened the box. As one they all peered in.

It was about two-thirds filled. “Bree, can you get a picture of this?” Meg asked.

“I’m on it.” Bree pulled the camera out of her pocket and snapped a few quick pictures.

When Bree was finished, Meg reached out a tentative hand, then stopped. “One more thing.” She fished through one of the boxes of documents from the Historical Society that she had been cataloging and pulled out a pair of white cotton gloves, and slid them on her hands. The others looked quizzically at her. “This is how you handle old documents—the oil from your skin can damage them. Susan knows that.” Susan didn’t respond, all her attention still focused on the box.

Meg turned back to the box and its contents. On top of the small pile inside the box was a long-dead flower, which crumbled when Meg touched it. A scrap of embroidery had fared better, and she set that on the table next to the box. A child-size ring, red-gold, set with what looked like tiny turquoise chips and a seed pearl. A small doll, leather-bodied with a hand-painted china head, which Meg laid gently next to the embroidery. And in the bottom, a small stack of folded papers, bound together with a ribbon that might once have been blue but which was now faded to a dull gray.

Before she reached to extricate them, Meg glanced at Susan. There was excitement in her face—but there was also pain. This meant so much to her. Why?

Meg pulled out the slender bundle. The paper appeared to have aged well, though Meg could see that the folded pages had been much-handled, because they bore obvious marks of wear around the edges. The moment of truth: were these old love letters—or something much more important to literature scholars? Meg untied the small bow holding the paper together and unfolded the top document, smoothing it out gently on the table.

There was no question: this was a handwriting she had seen before, on websites, in books, and all over the town of Amherst. That idiosyncratic rolling stroke, the broad spacing of letters and words, so unlike the prim formal style of the day, the frequent long dashes, could only belong to Emily Dickinson. The penciled signature at the bottom of the page, “Your dear Friend Emily,” was only icing on the cake.

“Wow!” breathed Bree. “It really is. Isn’t it?”

Meg looked up at the people around her, and saw that Susan’s face was wet with tears. Susan held out a hand. “May I? Please?”

Meg nodded, and handed her a second pair of gloves. Then she stepped away, watching. Susan took the piece of paper as though it might crumble in her hand. She ran a tentative finger across a line of text, then down to the signature. “I knew it,” she whispered. “He was right ...” She stopped abruptly and looked up, to find everyone watching her. She finally locked eyes with Meg.

And Meg knew what she had to ask. “You
knew
Daniel was looking for these letters?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

Susan dropped heavily into the nearest chair and nodded. Everyone else followed suit. The box sat in the middle of the table like a silent accusation. “There are more letters from Ellen to Emily than the ones in libraries. I have them, because they came down through my family—but I only found out about them recently. Nobody else knows about them, except Daniel—I told him about them. So he knew about them for a little while, except for where they were. Here.”

Meg stood up abruptly and stripped off her gloves. “I have a feeling that this is going to be a complicated story. Right, Susan?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

The next question was obvious. Meg said gently, “Susan, should we be talking to the police?”

Susan stared at her for a long moment, and then she nodded silently.

Meg looked at the people around the table, all showing signs of shock. “Then I’d better call Detective Marcus. Susan, why don’t you wait to explain things until he arrives? Then you’ll only have to do it once.” She snatched up her cell phone from the sideboard and went to the kitchen to make the call.

It took Detective Marcus half an hour to arrive at Meg’s front door. Meg had told him the bare minimum on the phone: that she had new information about Daniel Weston’s death, and she thought he should hear it from the source. If it had been anyone but her, he might have laughed or pawned her off to a subordinate. Instead Marcus had sighed and told her that he was leaving immediately.