One Bad Apple (14 page)

Meg was stunned, then angry, but she kept a tight grip on her emotions. “I assure you, that was not the case. And you can check the property records—my mother’s owned this place for decades. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

He ignored her. “So you deny that sequence of events?”

“Of course I do! Listen, Detective, Chandler and I were no longer involved with each other, and I had no idea what he was doing, in Boston or in Granford.”

But even as she voiced what she knew to be the truth, she could see all too clearly how someone else might see it differently. At least, someone who didn’t know her, or someone who wanted to do her harm or use her as a convenient scapegoat. But she wasn’t a hysterical, jilted lover, and even if she were, she would never have killed Chandler, either in the heat of the moment or with—what was it they called it?—malice aforethought. Anyone who knew her would attest to that. The problem was, no one around here knew her.

“You had dinner with Hale at the Lord Jeffery on Monday?”

“Yes. When he and his assistant came by the house and found out that I was living there, he invited me out. We caught up on what we’d been doing, discussed impersonal things, and then the Granford project.” Meg hesitated a moment before going on, wondering if she was handing him more ammunition for his suspicions. “At dinner he asked me if I would keep an eye on things locally and report to him, before the town voted on the project. I gather there are people in Granford who aren’t thrilled by the project, and he wanted to know what the opposition was saying. I told him I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that.”

“The waitress at the restaurant reported that there was some hostility between you.”

Naturally she would have to have noticed that. “Yes. I was angry that Chandler had asked me to spy for him, and I told him so. He put me in an awkward position, and I didn’t like it. I asked him to take me home, and he did. He left after dropping me off, and I didn’t see him again after that. All this should be in your notes, right? And haven’t you found anyone who saw him later? Where was he staying? Didn’t he have any business meetings the next day? You must have talked to his assistant by now. What did she tell you?”

“Ms. Corey, I’ll ask the questions. But no, so far you’re the last person to have admitted to seeing him.”

Meg wondered if she looked uncomfortable. “Not what’s-her-name?”

He was definitely unhappy with that question. “Lucinda Patterson. Ms. Patterson has been in Boston since yesterday. I’ll be speaking to her later this afternoon.”

So he hadn’t managed to track her down, which made him look bad. Meg wondered exactly when Lucinda had gone to Boston, but she didn’t think the detective was going to volunteer that information. “Detective, how long had Chandler been dead when he was found?”

The detective looked startled by her question. “Hard to say, given the conditions. He’d eaten dinner. ME puts it at maybe twelve hours.”

Meg suppressed a “gotcha.” “So you’re saying he was alive for at least a full day after I had dinner with him?”

The detective nodded, looking pained.

“Then surely you’ll be able to find someone who saw him in those twenty-four hours? You are looking, aren’t you?”

“We know our business here, Ms. Corey, even if this isn’t the big city.”

“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” They sat silently for a moment until Meg asked, “What happens now?”

“We continue to investigate. We are interviewing people both here and in Boston. People who knew both of you.” He stood up. “Thank you for coming in. We can reach you at the Granford address?”

Meg stood as well. “Yes, of course. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Oh—one last thing. Is my place still a crime scene, or can I use my water?”

“We’ve got all we need.”

One small blessing, at least. After the detective had escorted her out of the building, Meg sat in her car for a few moments. If she was going to be fair to him, she could see how it would look: poor Meg, her guy dumps her, she loses her job, and now she’s stuck out here in the boonies with no friends. Then Chandler shows up to rub her nose in it, and she gets mad and whacks him with the proverbial blunt object. No shortage of those around her place: tools, assorted pieces of old lumber, tree branches. Of course the detective would consider her a likely candidate for murderer.

But if she had killed Chandler, why would she do such a lousy job of hiding the body? How stupid did the detective think she was? No, bad argument: until a few days ago she hadn’t even known she had a septic tank, much less how it operated and what effect a body might have on it. Clearly there were gaps in her intelligence. And she had to admit that tank was certainly convenient—if she had been the person who killed Chandler.

She wasn’t, but Chandler was undeniably dead. So who had killed him? She gnawed at the question like a dog with a bone for the duration of her trip back from Northampton, but came up with no answer. She didn’t know enough about the town of Granford and its people to make even a wild guess.

Rather than go back to her cold, messy, empty house, Meg decided to make a detour to the nearest market and stock up on groceries. She wanted comfort food. Cooking in general didn’t excite her, but maybe the smell of a burbling pot of soup or a hearty stew or even an apple pie—would those apples Christopher had given her be any good for pie?—would make the place more welcoming and provide a tantalizing reward for her labors. She had earned it. And it would mask the less appealing smells of dry rot and mildew that had become the backdrop to her days.

Decision made, she pulled into the parking lot of the supermarket along the highway outside of Granford and parked. As she approached the door, she noticed a colorful sheet of paper taped at eye level. On closer inspection, she found that it was an announcement from Puritan Bank about a meeting at Granford Town Hall that evening, to update the citizens of Granford on the future of the Granford Grange development project. Odd name for the project; as far as she knew, a grange was a building, not a strip mall. Still, it sounded pretty and vaguely historic. In any case, it was clear that the bank wasn’t wasting any time, or maybe they were worried about losing momentum. Should she attend? Well, why not? She had a stake in the project, and she was curious to see what spin the bank would put on Chandler’s death. And on a more personal level, maybe she could test the waters and see if those worthy citizens treated her as though she were the prime suspect in his murder. Not a comforting thought, but she needed to know.

Which reminded her: she had promised Seth that she would register to vote. She searched her memory about how she had gone about that in Boston and came up blank. But she was sure that the town clerk would know, and that meant a trip to town hall. She could do that on the way home.

She filled her cart with groceries, shocked to realize how depleted her cupboards were. Had she eaten at all over the past few weeks? Or was she turning into one of those weird old maids who existed on cereal and the occasional can of cat food? She was beginning to understand how that could happen. Or maybe she was channeling Lula and Nettie, but at least they’d had each other to talk to. Frances was right: she needed to get out more, talk to other people, just to keep some sort of perspective. The historical society meeting had been pleasant enough, but sparsely attended, and they didn’t meet again until the next month. At least she could get a library card. Maybe there was some sort of adult-education program around, and she could learn something useful, like how to use a table saw. She snorted at that thought, drawing a startled glance from a teenage clerk shelving cans.

Groceries safely stowed in her car, Meg drove back to the center of Granford. The municipal offices occupied a stately Victorian house perched on the low hill overlooking the town green. The town clerk’s office turned out to be on the ground floor. Inside, Meg waited while the two men in front of her took care of various licenses and permits, then she stepped up to the desk. “I’d like to register to vote.”

The clerk, a woman about Meg’s age, looked up at her in curiosity. “New in town?”

“Yes, I’m Meg Corey, and I just moved to a house on County Line Road. That’s within the town limits, isn’t it?” Was it her imagination, or did the clerk’s expression change?

“Sure is. You registered anywhere else?”

“In Boston, but I don’t live there anymore.”

“Granford is your official residence?” When Meg nodded, the woman fished out a form from under the counter and pushed it toward her. “Fill this out. And I’ll need some ID with your current address on it.”

“Oh,” Meg said, feeling absurdly disappointed. “I haven’t been here long—my driver’s license still has my old address. What else would work?”

“Photo ID, bank statement, paycheck, government check, utility bill,” the clerk recited in a monotone.

“I changed the address on my bank account, but I haven’t gotten a statement yet. Wait! I know.” Meg fished in her purse, where she remembered stuffing a batch of bills she had grabbed from her mailbox. She leafed through them. Half of them had been forwarded from Boston, but then she struck gold. “Aha! My first utility bill—I wanted to make sure the lights stayed on.” Meg smiled at the clerk, who responded with tepid enthusiasm. She handed her the driver’s license and the bill, and concentrated on filling out the form, then handed it back to the clerk, who returned her ID. “Does this make me eligible to vote in the Special Town Meeting?”

The clerk laughed briefly. “Oh, yeah, no problem. You and half the town—never seen so many registrations in a short period. Have a nice day now.”

Since there were people waiting, Meg gathered up her documents and turned to leave. At least she’d accomplished one tangible thing today. Seth would be pleased. She certainly was pleased. And the message waiting on her phone also cheered her.

“Hi, it’s Seth. Don’t know if you saw the flyers about the meeting at town hall tonight, but if you want to go, I can swing by and pick you up. Six thirty? Let me know.”

She punched in his number but got his voice mail. Before she could change her mind, she said, “Hi, Seth, it’s Meg. I’d like to go to the meeting. Six thirty is fine, unless you’d like to stop by for supper before. I think I’m making soup.”

Now she had a plan for the evening, and she had committed herself to making a pot of soup. Meg set about gathering her ingredients and went scrounging for a large pot. Surely the daughters or granddaughters of farmers would have a pot large enough to feed a crowd? Her search was rewarded with a battered but serviceable stockpot lurking in the back of a deep cupboard. She made another mental addition to her to-do list: inventory cupboards. And clean them, she added dubiously. The grease on some of them was probably older than she was.

After starting a hearty vegetable soup, she went back to the front parlor and surveyed her domain. So far she had been approaching the renovation project in a rather haphazard fashion— mostly assessing what needed to be done, rather than doing it. The net result was a lot of bald patches, as though the house had a case of mange. Of course, most of the work had involved removing modern crap, and there was still plenty of that left to do. She was undecided about some of the wallpaper, and Frances had viewed it with scorn. Downstairs, it would definitely have to go: it represented the worst of the early 1980s, when the sisters had died and her mother had inherited the place. That was probably the last time anyone had done anything to the first-floor rooms. She couldn’t believe her mother had been responsible for it, but she might have hired someone local to pretty up the place for tenants. It was clear that either she hadn’t spent much on it, or her delegate had pocketed half the money.

Meg wandered slowly from room to room, looking at the sun-filled spaces with a critical eye. Seth had said the place had good bones, and she was beginning to understand what he meant. The proportions of the rooms were pleasing. The ceilings weren’t low enough to be confining, as she understood was often the case in old colonials, and there were plenty of good-sized windows. Much of the original woodwork had survived, although she wasn’t sure what its condition was, and the wide-board floors were in surprisingly good shape. She had already checked out the fireplaces, and they were salvageable—for a price. In the hallway she ran her hand over the stair-rail. Seth had said the stairs were a nineteenth-century addition, but that still made them at least a hundred years old. Meg tried to imagine the number of hands that had passed over the satiny old wood. So much history. So much she didn’t know.

The smell of cooking onions and carrots and celery drifted from the kitchen. It made the house seem more lived in, somehow.
Okay, Meg—what now?
She checked her watch: almost two thirty. What could she do in the three or so hours before Seth arrived? She couldn’t face one more half-finished project left in a muddle, so she wanted to find something that she could actually finish; she wanted progress, not more mess. So maybe the kitchen was the best place to start. She wondered just what else she would find lurking in the dark corners of the cabinets.
Note to self: mousetraps?