One Bad Apple (13 page)

Reluctantly Meg gathered up her bag from the step and let herself in the front door. Nothing had improved since the day before: the house smelled damp and musty. In fact, yesterday she hadn’t even noticed the trail of muddy footprints that the various representatives of the law had added to her less-than-pristine kitchen floor. And she wasn’t sure if she could run any water, or if her entire plumbing system was considered a crime scene. She amused herself by picturing the Granford police impounding all of her pipes as evidence, but sobered quickly. Should she call someone and ask? Or would they call her? She fished her cell phone out of her bag and discovered that her battery had died. She set Christopher’s bag of apples on the countertop, plugged the phone into the kitchen charger, then put on some coffee. She’d had only one cup at Rachel’s, and then she’d been tramping around the orchard in the cold, and she really deserved some hot caffeine.

She had just filled a cup when there was a rapping at her front door.
I thought Granford was rural and quiet. I’ve had more visitors over the past few days—dead and alive—than I had in years in Boston,
she reflected as she hurried to answer. She wrestled the door open to find her real estate agent, Frances, looking slightly less sleek than she had on Monday.

“Sorry to barge in like this, but I was in the neighborhood …” She looked strangely forlorn.

“Come on in. I’ve just made some coffee—want a cup?”

“If it’s no trouble.”

“Not at all.” Meg led the way to the kitchen, and Frances sat heavily in a chair at the table, without invitation. Meg poured a second mug of coffee and joined her at the table. “Did we forget to check something out?”

Frances sighed. “No. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be bothering you. But I guess I figured you’d have questions about selling, now that they found Chandler Hale …” She looked as though she wanted to cry.

Meg was mystified. “Did you know him?”

Frances sipped at her coffee, struggling to regain control. “Of course. He was buying land in Granford, or at least he was connected to the ones who were. How could I not?”

“Ah,” Meg said. Frances’s comment in no way explained the tears. “So you were working together?”

Frances shook her head vigorously. “No, nothing like that. In fact, he cut me right out of the loop—cost me a nice chunk of change, too. After …”

A horrible suspicion popped into Meg’s mind, and she hurried to squash it. Chandler and Frances? Unlikely. Frances might be a nice woman, and reasonably attractive for what Meg estimated was her forty-something years, but she came nowhere near meeting Chandler’s exacting standards for partners, long or short term.

Unless, of course, Chandler had wanted something from her.

If she was going to be honest with herself, Meg had always wondered why he had dated her. Meg was nice enough to look at, but not in his league. She was intelligent and capable, but she was no Wall Street darling. Maybe she had been filler— someone to amuse him while he scouted out his next trophy blonde. She had been flattered, sometimes amused, sometimes exasperated, but she had never felt any real, intimate connection with Chandler. They had dated for the better part of a year, and she still didn’t feel that she had known him. He had always kept secrets.

Meg stared at her coffee, troubled by her thoughts. Chandler had asked her to spy for him; what had he asked Frances to do? And what had he promised her? Whatever it was, it must have fallen through. But was it any of her business? She took a swallow of coffee and changed the subject quickly.

“All right, Frances, you might as well tell me what impact finding a body on the property is going to have on my chances of selling the place.”

Frances dragged herself back from wherever her thoughts had taken her. “What? Oh … We said May, right? Months away. Once they arrest someone, the whole thing will blow over. Shouldn’t be a problem. Unless, of course, you did it?” Frances scrounged up a token smile at her own weak joke.

“No. And if I had, I would have put him somewhere a little farther from home, obviously. Frances, why didn’t you mention the development project the last time we talked? And what do you think about it? Obviously it’s going to make a difference when I sell.”

Frances didn’t meet her eyes. “Sorry about that. I just thought you had enough to worry about, without dealing with something that might not ever happen. Honestly, I think the project might be just what this town needs. You’ve seen the main road—not much to look at, is it? Mostly car repair places and pizza joints. People drive through, but they’ve got no reason to stop. Now, don’t get me wrong—I love this place. Born here, grew up here, and I’m still here. But I know we need change. Heck, I go to Town Meetings, and every year we keep whittling at the programs that need the money most, like the library and the schools. Library’s only open three days a week now. It’s not right, and the money’s got to come from somewhere.”

Frances’s lecture on the community had apparently pulled her from her funk about Chandler’s death, Meg was glad to see. “I agree, in principle. But this is in my backyard, quite literally.”

“Meg, you can’t eat scenery, or pay your bills with it. The world changes. So will Granford. But that’s not your problem, is it? You’ll sell this place to some nice couple with two kids and a dog, and they won’t remember what the old Granford was like, and everyone will be happy. Right?”

“I suppose.” In fact, that had been Meg’s intention, and she was sure the family with two kids and a dog would be very happy here. But she could also see the old-timers’ viewpoint. It was always hard to deal with change. She’d weathered plenty in the past year, and she had expected her interlude in Granford to be something of a retreat, a time to regroup and recharge her own batteries. Instead she had found herself embroiled in a major public controversy, with a dead body on her hands. So much for planning.

But Frances had a point. The sooner the murder was cleared up, the sooner the public would begin to forget about it. After all, Chandler had been an outsider, and he wouldn’t be missed. As she had told Seth and Rachel, the bank would see to it that the project went forward uninterrupted. For them it was a business deal, plain and simple.

So why was Frances sitting in her kitchen? The clear morning light was not kind to the grooves bracketing her mouth, or the bags under her eyes. Or were those new? Was she really taking Chandler’s death that hard?

As if in answer to her question, Frances asked, “You knew Chandler before, right?”

How did word travel so fast? Sure, Granford was a small town, and murder had to be big news, but how did her personal connection get dragged into it so quickly? “Yes, in Boston,” Meg replied neutrally.

Frances pressed on. “I mean, you
knew
him, if you know what I mean.”

This was getting worse and worse. Meg barely knew Frances and had no way of guessing whether she was discreet, or whether she was the town crier for gossip. But apparently the word of her relationship with Chandler was already public property. Might as well make sure the right story got out. “Yes, we were seeing each other, but we broke it off last year.”

“He dumped you,” Frances said flatly.

Meg stared at her. “Yes, he ended the relationship. We both moved on. Frances, what are you asking?”

Frances shook her head. “Sorry, it’s none of my business. I guess I’m just upset. Look, Meg, one of the pluses—and minuses—of living in a small town is that everyone knows everyone else’s business. And people remember things. Like the time you went joyriding in your brother’s car in high school, or the wonderful cupcakes your mother baked for PTA meetings in 1983. You’re new here, so people are curious. And you haven’t spent much time getting to know your neighbors, which makes them even more curious. Please don’t think they mean it unkindly—they’re good people. But they’d be a whole lot happier to pin this murder on you than on one of their own. See what I mean?”

This was an angle Meg hadn’t considered. “Unfortunately, I guess I do. I’m sorry I can’t oblige. Yes, I knew Chandler, but until Monday I hadn’t seen him in months. I was totally surprised when he showed up here—I didn’t know about the project or his involvement in it. We had dinner, and then I sent him packing. The next thing I knew, he was dead. And that is the sum total of what I know.” Meg wasn’t sure how believable she sounded, even though it was the truth. She had to admit that the coincidence of her connection with Chandler was hard to dismiss. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Hey, don’t get defensive. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just that it would help if you let people get to know you a little better. Get out more. And the fact that Seth vouches for you helps.”

What? When had Seth talked about her, and to whom? He’d known her a total of three days. But there was no point in asking Frances about that—better that she take it up with Seth. “Look, Frances, I don’t mean to cut this short, but I’ve got to make some calls.”

Frances stood up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you. Don’t worry, whoever buys this place will probably be from somewhere else, and the murder will be ancient history by then. You just work on cleaning the place up, and get in touch when you want me to check it out again. Deal?”

“Sounds good to me. And thanks for what you said about the town. I’m used to living in a city, and the rules are different there, I guess.”

“Welcome to small-town Massachusetts. Oh, and you might want to see about getting that front door of yours planed down— first impressions matter, you know …”

Meg escorted Frances to the balky front door and watched as she pulled away. What was her visit all about? But before she could puzzle her way through Frances’s behavior, her phone rang. It was the detective’s office, requesting her presence in Northampton ASAP.

“Oh, before you hang up, can you tell me if I can use my drains?” Meg pleaded. Too late: the line had gone dead.

Half an hour later Meg arrived in the center of Northampton; the detective’s office was housed in the County Courthouse. Another new experience— and one which she would happily have avoided. With trepidation she entered the lobby and stated her business, then sat in one of the molded plastic chairs bolted to the floor in the bleak waiting area until Detective Marcus appeared. He nodded to the person at the desk, then silently escorted Meg through multiple sets of heavy automatic doors to his office. Inside, he gestured toward a chair in front of the desk, and Meg sat.

He took his time before addressing her, lining up the papers on his spartan desk, pulling out a couple of pencils and inspecting their points. Finally he began. “Ms. Corey, I asked you here to confirm the details of what you told us the other day. Often people omit critical details under the stress of the moment, and perhaps you can fill in anything that has occurred to you since.”

“Of course. I’m happy to help in any way I can.”

“Let me review the basics, to save time. You have resided in Granford for approximately a month now? And you lived in Boston before that?”

Meg nodded, and recited the basic details of her move to Granford once again. She clamped down hard on an urge to elaborate. Better stick to the facts, even though the laconic man across the desk made her want to babble.

“Why were you fired?”

Was he deliberately trying to provoke her? “I wasn’t fired. I was laid off because my position was declared redundant. My former employer merged with another bank, and after the merger they eliminated a number of positions. They offered a reasonable compensation package.”

“Your mother is the owner of record for the Granford property?”

“Yes, for about the last thirty years or so. She added my name to the title recently, when I agreed to renovate and sell it.”

“Tell me about your relationship with Chandler Hale.”

“When we were both in Boston, we … dated for approximately a year, maybe less.” Meg struggled with finding the appropriate term to describe their relationship. Everything sounded so stilted. “We ended the relationship about six months ago.”

“Before you lost your job?”

“Yes. There was no correlation between those two events. Chandler worked for another bank.”

“You didn’t work together?”

Meg shook her head. “No. We worked for different, competing banks.”

“And he never discussed the Granford development project with you?”

“Not that I recall. As far as I know, his involvement in the development project postdated our relationship.”

“You didn’t expect to see him in Granford?”

“No. It was a complete surprise to me.”

Detective Marcus said nothing for several beats, his eyes never leaving her face. Meg forced herself to meet his cold gaze. Finally he said carefully, “Is it possible that you followed Hale to Granford, in hope of rekindling your relationship? And that you took it hard when he indicated that he wasn’t interested?”