Golden Malicious (Apple Orchard Mystery) (16 page)

“I know. I’m just trying to do my civic duty, but there are days . . . Did Meg tell you about the bug-sniffing dogs?”

“No! Where do they come in?”

Meg left Seth to explain about the dogs while she dropped the marinated chicken on the grill and covered it, then stepped away as quickly as possible. The grill was hot. The air was hot. This had to end sometime, didn’t it?

After dinner, Bree cleaned up the few dishes and disappeared to her room, which at least had a slight breeze. Seth seemed distracted, but Meg didn’t take it personally—she was having trouble focusing, too. “Want to go out and see if there’s some moving air out back?”

They meandered outside and settled themselves on the Adirondack chairs overlooking the meadow. Meg reached out for Seth’s hand, and he took it; it seemed to be as much as they could do. They sat silently as darkness gathered.

Meg heard the distant ring of her cell phone back inside but couldn’t summon up the energy to go answer it. She was surprised when Bree came out with it in her hand.

“It’s Christopher—he says he needs to talk to Seth.” Bree thrust the phone at him.

“Thanks.” Seth took the proffered phone. “Hey, Christopher, what’s up?”

Meg watched as he listened, frowning and nodding. “Can it wait until morning? And is it okay if Meg sits in?” Another pause. “See you then.” Seth hung up.

“What was that all about?” Meg asked.

“I’m not sure,” Seth said slowly. “He said the inspectors found something odd and I need to know about it. He’s going to stop by here early. You can hear whatever he has to say, too.”

“How early is early? Before we start watering?”

“He said around eight. Does that work for you?”

“I guess so. I wonder what on earth would be odd about an insect infestation. But I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. I’m going in—I’m wiped out.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Christopher came rapping at the kitchen door a few minutes past eight the next morning. “Coffee?” Meg asked.

“Please.”

As Meg filled a mug for him, she said, “Seth’s out in his office, sorting out what he needs to do today, but I’m sure he heard your car arrive. He said you sounded very cryptic last night.”

“It’s an odd situation. Good morning, Briona,” he said as Bree came down the back stairs.

“Hi, Christopher. What’re you doing here? Did I miss something?” she said.

“That phone call last night?” Meg prompted, handing Christopher a mug of coffee.

“Oh yeah, right. I need coffee.”

Meg could hear Seth whistling as he approached, plus the scratch of Max’s claws on the back steps. Seth’s mood had lifted a bit. Last night had been . . . nice. Easy.

“Hey, Christopher,” Seth said as he walked into the kitchen. “What’s all the mystery about?”

“I’m sure you’re wondering why the results arrived so quickly, and the inspectors were careful to say that this may be merely a coincidence, but what they found was that all the infestations are virtually identical.”

“What does that mean?” Meg asked.

“As you know, they looked at three sites in Granford—and they will be looking at more in the vicinity, as I explained yesterday—and it appears that all began at approximately the same time.”

“How do they know that?” Seth said.

“They located a central tree with the highest number of holes and other indicators—and the dogs agreed—and worked outward from there. They were able to establish a perimeter fairly quickly, at least on the first pass. It would appear that these infestations began no more than two years ago.”

“Is that odd?” Meg asked.

“Not the age of them. If they had first arrived in the summer two years ago, they wouldn’t have spread very far in the first year, but now they’ve moved demonstrably outward from the origin. What
is
unexpected is that all three sites conform to the same pattern. They’re not contiguous, so there is no reason they should align so closely.” Christopher looked at his audience as if waiting for a response.

Meg’s brain seemed to be working slowly. “Why is that important? What are you saying?”

“I’m still not sure. If these creatures all appeared at the same time, why in those separate locations? I can imagine that wood products move onto the sawmill site with some regularity, so that is a potential source there. Seth, you mentioned that people bring firewood onto the park site. However, the logging site is more isolated, and if anyone wished to build a fire there, there would be plenty of material available on the ground—why carry it in? It seems highly unlikely that infestations at all three sites would have sprung up at the same point in time. The first and perhaps most logical conclusion is that these sites were created artificially. That is to say, someone planted the original insects, then sat back and waited for them to spread, which they did.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Seth demanded.

“I don’t know,” Christopher said simply. “I can think of no reason. What I do know is that the inspectors, who will be returning to the area today, are inclined to suspect a human perpetrator who is manufacturing this situation.”

“Are you saying someone just picked up a bunch of the insects and dropped them in the woods around here?” Meg asked. “But why? Who the heck benefits?”

“It’s not clear,” Christopher replied. “To tell the truth, I’ve never heard of any such incident, nor have my colleagues. It’s not even clear that there is any criminal act associated with this. I
can
tell you that there are hefty fines associated with transporting insects out of a quarantined area, if someone removed them from another location, such as the Worcester area, to bring them here. Look, Meg, Seth, I’ve told you what little I know. There will be more information coming in over the next few days. There is no action that you need to take right now. And even if this does prove to be a deliberate act of mischief or vandalism or whatever you choose to call it, the outcome will be the same: your town and Jonas Nash will still lose some trees. The protocols must be followed, once the problem has been publicly recognized.”

“Of course,” Seth said absently, working through the ramifications. “Thanks for letting me know, Christopher.”

Christopher stood up. “Having delivered my doom-and-gloom pronouncement, I must get to my office. I’ll forward any information that comes to me. I hope this doesn’t ruin your day. Give my regards to your lovely mother, Seth. I’ll see myself out.”

When he was gone, Seth, Bree, and Meg remained seated at the table. “Is this weird or what?” Bree asked.

“Definitely weird,” Seth agreed. “Is somebody just messing with us? It sounds pretty easy to do: take one forest, add beetles, and wait. Maybe it’s some new kind of domestic terrorism.”

“Please, let’s not jump to a conclusion like that!” Meg protested. “Nobody’s brought that up with Worcester.”

“That’s because in Worcester they’ve got a pretty good idea how it started,” Bree said. “Imported wooden packing materials. Seth, has the town bought any park benches or picnic tables from foreign sources?”

Seth shook his head. “We haven’t replaced anything in the park in the last two years, as far as I can remember, and even when we do, I usually farm out the work to local guys, and they use local wood. And that wouldn’t explain the infestation on Nash’s sawmill property, anyway.”

In her mind Meg went back to the location where she’d first seen the insect. A dead adult insect. Near a dead adult logger. An awful thought started brewing. “Seth, what if David Clapp died because of this? Maybe he stumbled over someone trying to leave bugs behind, and that’s why I saw the one I did. Or maybe he was the one who was planting them and somebody caught him in the act.” Someone like Jonas Nash? She hesitated to bring up Jonas directly since she knew he was Seth’s friend.

Seth didn’t answer immediately. “I suppose it’s a possibility, but why would anybody kill over this? Why the heck would it be so important?”

“We already have an idea of why,” Meg said. “Jonas loses a lot of timber that’s valuable to him. The town park is stripped of its trees, which makes it less attractive, so that affects the town. There’s got to be a motive in there somewhere, against Jonas or the town or both. Should we talk to Art? Or Marcus?”

“Meg!” Bree was quick to protest. “Trees and water, remember?”

“Yes, I know,” Meg said impatiently. “Seth, can you see if Art knows anything new about the death? I mean, it makes a big difference whether David Clapp fell or was hit.”

“Sure. I agree that Art needs to know, but let’s tell him before we go running to the state police. Anyway, Art’s probably surprised that we haven’t been hounding him.”

“Don’t make fun of it—I’m the one who found the body, remember?”

“I’m sorry, you’re right.” He thought briefly. “Look, even if we assume that Clapp saw something he wasn’t supposed to, we have no idea why somebody thought he had to die. Most people wouldn’t know what the insect was.”

“Maybe that part
was
just an accident,” Meg suggested. “Maybe he startled someone in the act, and that person pushed him and he tripped. But there’s still a crime, right? Or maybe he was doing it himself, got spooked by something or someone, then fell and hit his head when he tried to hide. Or he was doing it and somebody surprised him and a fight happened. No matter how it went, nobody’s come forward to report seeing him or anyone else on the Nash property.”

“What are you suggesting, Meg?” Seth asked. “That he was involved in planting the bugs? Which side was he on?”

“I . . . don’t know. Look, we just found out about this, and we need to think it through.”

Seth looked at his watch. “I’m supposed to meet Donald in half an hour, and that’s what’s paying the bills. Let me see if I can get together with Jonas Nash. Maybe we can share some information.”

“Will he talk to you?” Meg wondered if Jonas had had something to do with any of this, although he stood to lose the most from the infestation. Was there such a thing as insurance against insect invasions?

“Probably. Besides, we’re not accusing him of anything. He should know what Christopher told us, if he doesn’t already know from the government people. And I’ll call Art, too. Let him decide whether it’s worth passing on to Detective Marcus.”

“And somebody had better explain what laws apply here,” Meg muttered. “You go ahead, Seth. I want to think about all this—while we water, Bree.”

Up the hill, Bree handled the calculations for how much water was needed to simulate the best natural rainfall, a phenomenon Meg could barely remember. She’d read one suggested guideline for amateur orchardists with a tree or two in their yard: a five-gallon bucket of water once a week for young trees. She tried to imagine hauling five gallons of water to each tree and quailed. Of course, the system she and Bree were using dated back more than a century, only now a gasoline engine, rather than a team of horses, provided the power to move the water tank. But that tank had to be refilled regularly back at the well, so it was a time-consuming process.

That left at least part of her brain free to think about the beetle problem. To state it simply, the insect was where it shouldn’t be. Well, it could be there, but not as it had been found. Ergo, somebody had put it there, or possibly in two or three separate “there”s, and maybe more. Why? That was the big question.

From what she had read, it looked like the bug was a threat, all right, but its timetable was years, not weeks. It wasn’t like a plague of locusts, which could strip a tree bare in minutes. Now, she didn’t want to downplay its importance in the grand ecological scheme of things, but it certainly wasn’t something that would catch someone’s eye and cause panic. If she hadn’t happened to see one dead adult, it could have gone unnoticed for who knew how long. So if someone had planted it there, he or she didn’t have a timetable and was content to wait, even for years? It didn’t make sense. She would have expected whoever was doing this to want faster and more obvious results.

Time to refill the water tank again. She and Bree traded off driving and managing the water distribution hoses. The wellhead that provided the water was smack in the middle of the older part of the orchard, which often meant they had a long trek back to it, but thank goodness it was there at all, because Meg didn’t know what would have happened to her trees and her crop without it. So far they had managed to keep up with the trees’ water needs, and the spring was holding up fine. But if they had to cut back on watering, not only this year’s crop but next year’s as well could be affected. And the poorer the crops, the less likely Meg would be able to afford the drip irrigation system that would deliver water consistently and improve the crops. It was frustrating.

What did the beetle infestation mean? The government apparently had a lot of rules in place about destroying trees that were infested, and also destroying trees that
might
become infested if they were located nearby. The end result was a lot of trees lost. Gone. Bree had told her that the felled trees couldn’t be used for something else like lumber. They couldn’t leave the quarantine area. That might have an impact on motive. Would someone in Granford want the trees? Unless they were right here, they were in for disappointment. Or did they want to get rid of the trees? Was the underlying land the issue, with or without the trees?

And where were the creatures coming from? From what she’d seen of Christopher’s lab, they were well contained there. How many would it take to establish a single infestation? Surely more than a handful. Dozens? Hundreds? And then multiply that times three, at least. Could just anyone order up a batch from a research lab like the one at the university, or were there screening procedures in place?

Too many questions. She needed more information.

She and Bree had gotten a late start because of Christopher’s visit, so they finished late. They had just returned to the house when Meg’s phone rang.

It was Seth. “Meg, I finally tracked down Jonas Nash, and I think we’ve got stuff to talk about. You want to come over to his office at the sawmill? It’s air-conditioned . . .” Seth dangled the incentive in front her.

“Sure. Now?”

“There’s one small catch: can you pick up some sandwiches and something to drink on the way over?” he asked.

“I think I can handle that. Give me an hour. I want to shower first.”

“You going out?” Bree asked when Meg had hung up.

“Yeah, I’m going over to talk with Jonas Nash with Seth.” When Bree looked blank, Meg explained, “You know, the guy with the sawmill and the woodlot where I found the first beetle?”

“Oh, right, him. I think Michael and I are going to go see another nice, cool movie. I only hope I can stay awake.” Bree hesitated a moment before asking, “Hey, are you and Seth okay? He’s been kind of funny lately.”

Meg debated about filling Bree in on their issues and decided against it. “He’s got some things to work out. Nothing you need to worry about. You and Michael go have fun. I claim the first shower.”