Picked to Die (An Orchard Mystery)

Praise for the Orchard Mysteries

“Meg’s determination to run an orchard on her own without any experience makes her an admirable character, as she faces each new challenge with good humor and a smidgeon of exasperation. A reliable cast of characters support Meg and make this a strong series that continues its streak of compelling plots.”

—
Kings River Life Magazine

“Sheila Connolly continues to include fascinating facts about apples and orchards within her stories . . . Not only will you get hooked on the mystery, but you will be racing to the kitchen to bake an apple treat!”

—
Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

“Fans will enjoy the heroine taking a bite out of crime in this fun regional cozy.”

—
Genre Go Round Reviews

“Really well written . . . I was constantly kept guessing. This series is in its stride, and I’m eagerly awaiting the next book in this series.”

—
Fresh Fiction

“Meg is a smart, savvy woman who’s working hard to fit into her new community—just the kind of protagonist I look for in today’s traditional mystery. I look forward to more trips to Granford, Massachusetts!”

—
Meritorious Mysteries

“An enjoyable and well-written book with some excellent apple recipes at the end.”

—
Cozy Library

“A wonderful slice of life in a small town . . . The mystery is intelligent and has an interesting twist . . .
Rotten to the Core
is a fun, quick read with an enjoyable heroine, an interesting hook, and some yummy recipes at the end.”

—
The Mystery Reader
(4 stars)

“Full of rich description, historical context, and mystery.”

—
The Romance Readers Connection

“Meg Corey is a very likable protagonist . . . [A] delightful new series.”

—
Gumshoe Review

“An example of everything that is right with the cozy mystery . . . A likable heroine, an attractive small-town setting, a slimy victim, and fascinating side elements . . . There’s depth to the characters in this book that isn’t always found in crime fiction . . . Sheila Connolly has written a winner for cozy mystery fans.”

—
Lesa’s Book Critiques

“A warm, very satisfying read.”

—
RT Book Reviews
(4 stars)

“The premise and plot are solid, and Meg seems a perfect fit for her role.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Meg Corey is a fresh and appealing sleuth with a bushelful of entertaining problems . . . One crisp, delicious read.”

—Claudia Bishop, bestselling author of the Inn at Hemlock Falls Mysteries

“A delightful look at small-town New England, with an intriguing puzzle thrown in.”

—JoAnna Carl, national bestselling author of the Chocoholic Mysteries

“Thoroughly enjoyable . . . I can’t wait for the next book and a chance to spend more time with Meg and the good people of Granford.”

—Sammi Carter, author of the Candy Shop Mysteries

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Sheila Connolly

Orchard Mysteries

ONE BAD APPLE

ROTTEN TO
THE CORE

RED DELICI
OUS DEATH

A KILLER C
ROP

BITTER HARVEST

S
OUR APPLES

GOLDEN MA
LICIOUS

PICKED TO DI
E

Museum Mysteries

FUNDRAISING THE D
EAD

LET’S PLAY DEAD

FIRE ENGINE DEAD

MON
UMENT TO THE DEAD

RA
ZING THE DEAD

County Cork Mysteries

BURIE
D IN A BOG

SCANDAL I
N SKIBBEREEN

Specials

DEAD L
ETTERS

AN OPEN BOOK

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

PICKED TO DIE

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2014 by Sheila Connolly.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

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For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14325-8

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / October 2014

Cover illustration by Mary Ann Lasher.

Cover design by Annette Fiore Defex.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

Even in small towns, everyone doesn’t know everyone else. That’s particularly true for one nearly invisible community in Granford, Massachusetts, the town I’ve created in the Orchard Mysteries: the Jamaican pickers who arrive each year to harvest the crops from the fields and orchards of Massachusetts. Their visas allow them to stay no longer than 364 days each year, so they never become part of the town, even though the same workers return year after year, sometimes for generations.

This book is, in a way, about that community, without whose members farmers would struggle to earn their living. It’s also about people’s assumptions about others—and how often they may be wrong.

I need to thank Janice McArdle, librarian at the Granby Free Public Library (which recently moved to a wonderful new building), and Terry Johnson, former president of the Granby Historical Association, for providing so much useful information about the real town that Granford is based on, and for being so supportive of my efforts. Thanks also to all the townspeople who have stopped by to talk to me at the annual Granby Town Wide Fall Craft & Tag Sale and tell me about their own memories of the town. You can be sure you’ll recognize a few of your stories in future books!

The town of Granford would not exist without the ongoing help and guidance of my agent, Jessica Faust of BookEnds, and my editor, Shannon Jamieson Vazquez of Berkley Prime Crime, and I owe them many thanks. And the series would never have happened or gone forward without the guidance of Sisters in Crime and the warm enthusiasm of the Guppies.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die

—Alexander Pope,
Ode on Solitude

“This whole town has gone crazy,” Seth Chapin said as he dropped heavily into a chair across the kitchen table from Meg Corey.

Meg looked at her fiancé in confusion. “Fiancé”: such an odd, somehow old-fashioned word. She kept forgetting that they were now officially “engaged” in the eyes of the world. Well, the small world of Granford, Massachusetts, at least—it wasn’t like she was announcing it in the
Boston Globe
. She didn’t feel like a fiancée, which she’d always thought was an equally silly word. They hadn’t gotten any closer to setting a date. They hadn’t discussed where or when or how. They hadn’t even worked out where they’d live, though currently Seth was spending most of his time at her house, which made sense, since his office and storage space were in her barn. On the other hand, Meg also had her housemate to consider—Briona Stewart, who was also Meg’s orchard manager, and indispensable to keeping the apple orchard running. Given how little Meg could afford to pay, the position came with a free room, and she couldn’t just toss Bree out into the local student-driven housing scene. There were many things Meg and Seth needed to talk about, maybe when they were less busy and exhausted—she with the apple harvest, Seth with his fast-growing renovation business. Not the best time to make happy plans.

“What are you talking about?” Meg asked now. “Did I miss something? What’s going crazy?”

“Everyone in town wants to tear things down and put things up, all at once.” Seth sighed. “You have anything cold to drink?”

“Of course. Water, iced tea, even some sports drink, if you want electrolytes.” After a recent brush with heat exhaustion, Meg had been scrupulous about keeping plenty of liquids on hand. Since it was harvest season, she was also always reminding her pickers up in the orchard to stay hydrated, too.

Seth hauled himself up and got a bottle of water from the refrigerator. He sat and downed half the bottle. “That’s better. So, basically, I think everybody in town looked up, noticed it was September, and said, ‘Hey, we’d better get something done before winter.’ Of course, we could argue about whether there’ll even be a winter this year, what with the weird weather we’ve had. Or maybe there’ll be a six-month winter.”

Meg sipped her own drink. “Back up—who’s ‘everybody’?”

“Well, first there’s the library. Did you hear about the new one?”

Meg racked her brain and came up blank. She hadn’t had time to read the local paper since . . . June? And it was only a weekly. She’d been so busy for months, first with fighting the drought, which had meant a lot of hand-watering of her eighteen acres of apple trees; now with managing the harvest, which had begun in August and would run through November, depending on when the apples decided to ripen, which was kind of unpredictable. But a new library was a major step for Granford, Massachusetts, and she felt like she should have known. Besides, Seth, a town selectman, usually kept her up-to-date. “Uh, no?”

“And you a concerned citizen!” Seth joked. “Okay, last year one of the old families in town donated a part of their property to the town to use to build a new library. It’s out near the high school, on Route 202. Plenty of space for parking, and it’s big enough to build what they want, assuming they can figure out how to pay for it. They’ve already got some state grants, and the fund-raising is going well.” He stopped to drink some more water. “The building site is set back pretty far from the road, so you might not have noticed it if you drove past it. But there was a formal ground-breaking a few months ago.”

“Sorry I missed it. Should I make a contribution? But building a new library doesn’t sound at all crazy to me.”

“I’m not finished,” Seth said. “Then there’s the Historical Society.”

“What are they doing?” Meg asked. Now, the Historical Society
was
someplace she was involved with. They owned a nice but too-small one-story building that faced the village green, just down the hill from the church. When she’d first visited almost two years ago now, as a newcomer to Granford, it had been an unheated space filled with a hodgepodge of unrelated collections. She wasn’t surprised that the director, Gail Selden, had bigger plans. Gail had also become a friend, and had helped Meg more than once to find information about her own eighteenth-century home. “Don’t tell me they’re moving!”

“No, not that,” Seth replied. “They own that building outright, but as you’ve probably noticed, it needs work. And it’s not really big enough to serve the public the way they’d like.”

That was true. Gail had worked wonders cleaning it up and creating exhibits that made sense, but it was still small and unheated.

Seth went on, “The Society has collections stashed all over town, wherever they could find storage space, and Gail really wants to get them all under one roof. But still the same old roof.”

“So what are they planning?”

“Basically, they had two choices: build up or build down. The Historical Society board didn’t want to change the profile of the building by adding another story, even a partial one, so they’ve decided to dig out under the building.”

“Wow—that sounds ambitious. Is it even possible?” Meg got up to help herself to another bottle of water, laying an affectionate hand on Seth’s shoulder as she passed. She was still getting used to having him around more or less full-time, but with their busy schedules, it was nice when they saw each other at all. “Want another?”

“Sure.” He laid his hand over hers, briefly. “They have an architect who says it’s possible, if it’s done carefully, of course. At least it’s not too big a building. They’d have to put supports under the existing building, then excavate, then pour a foundation and finish the space so it can be used for document and collections storage, which means special considerations for moisture and ventilation. Oh, and Gail really wants a bathroom in the building for staff and volunteers.”

Meg laughed. “I can certainly understand that!” While her own colonial house had four bedrooms, it had only one bath, which really wasn’t enough with three people living in the house—especially when they all needed showers at the same time after a working day. She had to keep reminding herself that when the house had been built by one of her Warren family ancestors, there had been
no
indoor plumbing beyond the well in the basement, which had provided water for the kitchen above by way of an old hand pump. But standards for personal hygiene had been different then. “So what’s the time frame there?”

“Yesterday,” Seth said. “Seriously, they want to get it roughed out before the ground freezes, so it’s a pretty ambitious schedule. But they more or less have the money in hand, so they don’t want to wait.”

“They do?” Having money in hand was an unusual situation for most historical societies.

“Yeah. The Society also owns the house across the street, which they rent out for income, and Gail told me that when they talked to a financial advisor he told them that they could take out a mortgage on the rental house, and voilà! They’d have the cash for the renovations. The rent gives them enough income to cover the mortgage payments. Once they figured out how much money they had to work with, then they started thinking about building plans.”

“I’m impressed. So, that’s the library and the Historical Society—are you finished yet?”

“Not quite. There’s also a school building that needs some serious work, and nobody can decide whether to try to fix it—with state money—or to tear it down and start over. So we put together a committee to study it, but there’s a deadline coming up shortly.”

I really am out of the loop
, Meg thought. Of course, not having any children, she hadn’t paid much attention to school-related issues, but still. “Is that all?”

“Almost. This is off the record, but the town is also thinking about selling the town hall building.”

“What? I like that building!” Meg protested.

“It’s a lovely structure, but a lousy municipal building. It was built as a private summer home at the height of the Victorian era. The wiring isn’t up to code, so it’s hard to use computers and printers and the like.”

“Where would the town administration go? Is there some other building that would work? Or do they want to build, too?”

Seth shook his head. “Not clear. They might be able to move into the old library when the new one opens.”

“This really is a game of musical chairs, isn’t it?” Meg said. “Where do you stand on all of these? I mean, you’re a selectman, so in a sense, you are the town, or part of it.” Meg knew there were only three members on the select board, plus a town manager. Who voted to approve projects like these?

Seth leaned back in his chair and stretched. “Caught right in the middle. The library and the Historical Society have their own funding, so they don’t need our approval, apart from permitting and inspections and such. The school project does, and obviously selling town hall would. Theoretically, I’m in favor of all and any of these, as long as the financial numbers make sense and they meet all construction requirements—which could be challenging, at least for the Historical Society.”

“Are you going to be personally involved?” Meg asked. When she’d first met Seth, he’d been managing his family’s plumbing business, but his real love was building restoration and renovation. Although plumbing was a good fallback when no one could afford historically accurate renovations to their older homes.

“If I had my choice, I’d help out with the Historical Society project. It’s an interesting challenge, and I’d like to be sure they retain the historic character of the building. As you know as well as I do, when you start jerking around an old building, you always end up finding other things you need to fix, like rotting sills or termite damage. And if they’re putting in an HVAC system—which, by the way, would be a first in that building—there are issues of windows and insulation and making the building more airtight while still keeping it authentic, at least in appearance.”

“And you don’t have to vote on that project, so there’s no conflict,” Meg mused, almost to herself.

“Exactly. The library doesn’t need me, and the school project probably wouldn’t either. The town hall question is anybody’s guess. So that leaves the Historical Society. By the way, I pointed Gail toward an architect who specializes in this kind of project, so they’ve already got plans in hand.”

“Can it be done before winter?”

“It’s a tight schedule, but it could work, if everything goes well.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We seal it up as best we can and hope for a mild winter. At least the collections will be stored off-site.”

“Speaking of the collections, I know she’s got more documents about this house that I’d love to see, but I haven’t had the time. Maybe when the harvest is over.” Winter, Meg knew from last year—her first as an apple grower—was the slowest time for the orchard. She’d have some long days to fill.

“How’s the harvest going?”

Meg shrugged. “I don’t have a lot to compare it to other than last year, but Bree says we’re doing okay. We were lucky that the drought broke when it did. Another couple of weeks and we’d have lost a lot of apples.”
Along with most of my very thin profit margin
.

“Everything working out with the pickers?”

“So far. Most of the regulars are back, bless them, although we lost one to a competitor over in Belchertown who could offer a little more money, and there are fewer and fewer people who want to do this kind of manual labor.”

Meg was lucky that although
she
was new to running an orchard, the orchard itself was well established, and in recent years had been overseen by the local state university. Which was also how she’d come to employee Bree, a recent graduate of the university who’d studied orchard management. The fact that Bree was Jamaican-born also helped her in managing the mainly Jamaican pickers who had been working the orchards in the Connecticut River Valley for generations—at least it helped once they got used to the idea of working for a woman, and a young one at that, and one who’d spent most of her life actually living in Massachusetts rather than Jamaica. But Bree had earned their respect and things were going smoothly; the loss of that one picker was in no way her fault. “That’s why Bree and I are both up there most days, just to fill in. It’s hard to know in advance from week to week what’s going to be ripe, and sometimes we get swamped. Plus, it’s demanding work. Thank goodness the new trees we planted in the spring won’t be bearing for a couple more years. Maybe by then I’ll have figured out how this all works.”

“Can you take a short break tomorrow? I’m going to talk to Gail about the excavation process in the morning, if you want to tag along.”

“I’d love to see Gail, and this project sounds really interesting. I don’t think we’ve got a lot on the schedule for tomorrow, so I can probably sneak away. But I’ll have to check with Bree.”

“You talking about me?” Bree came in through the back door.

“May I take an hour or two off tomorrow morning, please, ma’am?” Meg said, smiling. “The Historical Society is planning to add a basement under their building, and I’m curious to see how they’re going to do it.”