A Late Frost Read online

  “I have to decide something about the house,” he said.

  “No rush. I can understand why you want to keep it,” Meg told him.

  “But it takes maintenance, and some heat in the winter. Besides, a house should be lived in—that’s what keeps it alive. But once I’ve sold it, I lose control of it. I’d like to see a young family living there, raising kids, but once it’s out of my hands, I have no say.”

  “What does your mother think? After all, she lives next door.”

  “She says it’s my decision—it’s in my name, and she’s happy with her own house, or at least as long as a heavy metal band doesn’t move in next door and practice at three a.m. And if that happens, she figures I can pass a town ordinance to take care of it.”

  “Would you rather we sold my house?”

  “No,” he said without hesitation. “It’s more practical for our needs, and besides, your business is there. And my office. Don’t worry—I’ll get my head wrapped around it soon enough. I’ve given myself until summer to decide—that’s when a lot of families relocate, once the school year is over.”

  “Okay,” Meg said simply. “You ready to walk down again? And I bet Max is going to be mad that we took a walk without him.”

  “No doubt.”

  They reached the bottom of the hill in time to hear a ringing phone, but it had stopped by the time they had unlocked the door and made it inside. Meg took a steadying breath before checking the caller record: it had been Art. Did he have an answer so soon? She noticed that he’d left a voice mail, and punched in the code. It was short and to the point: “The test was positive. We need to talk later.”

  Meg set the phone receiver down carefully. Had she really believed—hoped—that the elaborate story they had pieced together the day before was just a fantasy? Well, now it looked like they’d been right, and things suddenly got a lot more complicated.

  She walked back into the kitchen, where Seth was looking through the cabinets at their ingredients, but when he saw her face he stopped. “Art?”

  Meg nodded. “It was colchicine.”

  “Damn,” Seth muttered.

  “Exactly,” Meg replied.

  19

  “What do we do now?” Meg asked.

  “I take it Art’s message didn’t say what he planned to do?” Seth replied.

  “Nope. So you’re suggesting that we talk to him first?”

  “I think so. Find out what he thinks he should do, which affects what we should do.”

  “Right,” Meg said, though she wasn’t convinced. “What about Christopher?”

  “Let Art deal with him.”

  “And Larry?” Meg asked softly.

  “I . . . don’t know. You have his cell number, right?”

  “Yes. That’s the only way I know to contact him. He doesn’t exactly have a fixed address.”

  Seth sighed. “There’s a part of me that thinks we should talk to him, one on one, before this goes any further. Then there’s this other part of me that thinks it’s absolutely the wrong thing to do. What if he just disappears after he’s met with us? Marcus would probably find a way to accuse us of interfering with a criminal investigation.”

  “It’s possible, even if it isn’t an official criminal investigation yet,” Meg agreed cautiously. “But I don’t think he would.”

  “Meg, you’re splitting hairs. It’s only inches from being a criminal investigation. You’re saying that you want to go with your gut, rather than follow official procedure?”

  Meg was beginning to get mad. “Doesn’t that sound a bit familiar? It’s not like we haven’t done that before. Look, I respect the law and I know you represent the town so you have additional obligations, but you and I both know Marcus, and we know we’re not his favorite people. If we tell him anything about what we’ve learned it will probably just annoy him because he’ll see it as trampling all over his official turf, and to tell the truth, it is. And that will make things worse for Larry.”

  “I can’t disagree with you, Meg. But let me ask you this: how much are you willing to give up for Larry?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m saying that you risk jeopardizing your relationships with Art and the state police, and maybe Christopher, for the sake of a young man you don’t know very well. Sure, you need someone to step into Bree’s shoes and manage your orchard for you. But there are other people out there who can do that job, and Christopher could find you one.”

  “Christopher believes in Larry,” Meg said, hating the sullen tone in her voice. “And I trust Christopher. He’s known Larry for years.”

  “Then you owe it to Christopher to talk to him before you talk to Larry.”

  “Yes, I agree with you on that. But what about Art?”

  “That’s trickier, I’ll admit. He’s already skating on thin ice, since he’s asked for information from the lab that technically he shouldn’t have. Whether that’s because he’s our friend or because he thinks there’s more to this death than meets the eye is not clear. He heard us out, but I don’t think he’s made up his mind about where Larry may fit. And he’s got to maintain a good working relationship with the detective or he’ll never have access to anything again.”

  Meg thought about her three a.m. fantasies. Oh well—might as well drag everything out into the open now so Seth could shoot them down. “I don’t know that this is the best time to mention this, but there’s something else, Seth.”

  He looked pained. “What?”

  “It occurred to me last night, or rather, very early this morning, that maybe Monica wasn’t the intended victim.”

  “What?”

  “That she wasn’t the one who was meant to die. She just happened to get a dose of this stuff somehow and it killed her, but maybe it wasn’t supposed to.”

  Seth stared at her for a few beats before responding. “Let me get this straight. Fact: we now know—unofficially—that Monica was poisoned, presumably with colchicine. Theory number one: somebody had a reason to sicken or kill Monica and found a way to do it, using a somewhat obscure poison. Now you’ve added theory number two: Monica somehow ingested this poison, whether she knew it or not, and died quickly, but she wasn’t supposed to get that dose. Did she eat someone else’s cookie? And who was supposed to die, and at whose hand? And finally, tell me again what you and I are supposed to be doing about any of this. I’m sorry, but I think your theory kind of falls apart pretty fast.”

  “I know it sounds crazy—hey, it was three o’clock in the morning when this occurred to me. But remember this: we’re the ones Christopher came to when he made the connection between Monica’s symptoms and the chemical that he knew Larry had been working with. He didn’t talk to Art or the state police first, he talked to us. So I’m guessing that means that he has his doubts that Larry could have been involved. When we brought Art in, he took it seriously enough that he went to the next level and confirmed the poison. He told us, but as of a few minutes ago he hadn’t told anyone else. There are too many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ in all of this.”

  “Hold it,” Seth interrupted. “You’ve now gone all the way back to the beginning, and you have no motive and no suspect, and the poison reached the wrong person by unknown means?”

  “Well, sort of. Maybe. So what are our goals, apart from figuring out why Monica is dead?” Meg asked. “One, protect Art. Two, protect Larry. At least until we get more facts.”

  Seth sighed. “Whoever ran the test in the lab may report it to the state police, with or without implicating Art. He—or she—may regard it as a legal obligation.”

  “True. So let’s assume the state police will know, sooner or later. But what if nobody was supposed to die? Maybe the whole thing was a stupid accident.”

  “Then tell me, why was Monica the only person affected? Not Douglas, not anyone else at the WinterFa
re. And where did this colchicine come from?”

  “Seth, I don’t know! But what do we do now?”

  “Are you asking me for my opinion, or do you want me to tell you what to do?”

  For a brief moment Meg indulged in the fantasy of letting Seth make all the difficult decisions, taking them out of her hands. She squashed that quickly. “That’s not the way we operate. Is it?”

  “No, I hope not. We’re partners. We discuss things. I don’t give you orders.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Meg didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t just walk away, although she could use some time alone to try to fit the pieces together. But they had to work this out together, because that’s what she wanted from this marriage, and she hoped Seth did, too.

  She took a deep breath. “Look, we’re tired, we’re hungry, and we’re frustrated. Those are not good conditions under which to be making decisions. Plus we’ve got a muddy mix of legal and ethical and moral issues all tangled up in this. One solution would be to do nothing and let anybody else handle it, or if they choose, ignore it.”

  “But that’s not the way we do things, right?” Seth said, almost smiling.

  “Obviously not. Monica died Sunday. We and a very few other people know she died from a poison that is available legally but that most ordinary people have never heard of. She could have taken it herself—maybe she thought she’d failed somehow with the WinterFare, or she couldn’t face nursing her husband through a debilitating illness that could last decades, or they were out of money. Maybe she had cancer or some other illness herself and couldn’t handle all these pressures at once. Unless or until we can find her doctor, and maybe Douglas’s, we can’t say. But some random stranger poisoning her is less likely than any of those, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” Seth agreed. “But, Meg, this is not our responsibility. Let the authorities handle it. Let the state police decide if they want to make public the way Monica died. If asked, Larry should admit he knows about colchicine, but it’s unlikely that anyone will take him seriously as a suspect. And you and I stay out of it and go about our business. That’s the simplest solution.”

  “I know. So why do I feel bad about doing nothing?”

  “Because you care about people, and about this town.”

  “I’m beginning to understand why people become hermits.”

  “You wouldn’t last a month.”

  A few minutes later Art rapped on the back door, interrupting a nicely distracting intimate moment in the kitchen. Seth went to let him in.

  “You got my message?” Art said without preamble.

  “We did. I wish we hadn’t been right,” Meg told him.

  “You need to know that my lab buddy felt that he had to put that into the report to the state police, although in it he said that test was his own idea, not mine.”

  “We thought that might happen,” Seth said. “So the state police know it was a poison, and they know which one. What’s their next step?”

  “They don’t exactly share with me, but my guess would be that they’d go back to Monica’s house and do a more thorough search, looking for colchicine.”

  “How’s Douglas holding up?” Meg asked.

  “Social services let him go home after they’d evaluated him. Apparently he’s more coherent than he was when we first saw him, but if it’s Alzheimer’s or dementia or some combination, his clear moments may come and go.”

  “Can he stay alone?”

  “For now. They’ll send someone regularly to check him out, but that’s not a long-term solution. Nobody’s got a better idea, anyway.” Art hesitated. “Look, you guys, it really would be best if you just keep your distance from here on out. Let Marcus and his gang work through the steps, just the way we did. They can talk to people at the university about the stuff, and they may come across Christopher that way. What he says is up to him, but it doesn’t have to involve you two.”

  “So you’re ordering us off the case?” Meg asked, smiling to soften the question.

  “I’m asking. I know I can’t possibly control either one of you. How about I add ‘please’?”

  Meg glanced at Seth. “We promise we’ll behave ourselves, Art.”

  Art cocked one eyebrow, clearly not believing her. “Uh-huh. You wouldn’t happen to know where Larry is, would you?”

  “No,” Meg told him. “I have his cell number, but I haven’t seen him lately.”

  “Let me know when he shows up or checks in, okay?”

  “We will. Thanks for coming by,” Seth said.

  “Night, you two,” Art tossed back over his shoulder as he left.

  “So that’s that. Should we call Larry? Wait for tomorrow? Throw him to the wolves?”

  “Meg, let’s just eat dinner like normal people and talk about anything except murder, okay?”

  “Mr. Chapin, I think that’s an excellent idea.”

  As they were getting ready for bed a couple of hours later, Meg said, “You know, I think I’ll call Ginny Morris tomorrow. We chatted for about two minutes at the fair, and I said I’d love to know more about how she manages an organic orchard. Since we’ve already figured out that this is the slowest part of the year for us, maybe I could invite her for lunch and then we could go look at her trees? Do you know anything about the place?”

  “I didn’t know the people who owned it, but I’m pretty sure it stood empty for a few years, which can’t have helped the trees or the house. They must have gotten a good price on it. Anyway, you’d know better than I would what it would take to bring the orchard back to full production.”

  “A couple of seasons, probably, but that’s only a guess,” Meg told him. “I know I really lucked out here, since Christopher and the university had maintained my orchard all along. Do you know Mr. Ginny? Darn, why do I keep forgetting his name?”

  “Al, I think Ginny said. I’ve met him a time or two, mostly in passing. If there were any permit issues regarding the organic status of the orchard, they didn’t come through me. And as far as I know, they haven’t done anything in the way of improvements to the house—maybe cash is tight. I know they’ve got a couple of kids in school here now, but I couldn’t tell you ages or genders.”

  “Well, then, I will meet with Ginny and endeavor to fill in the gaps in your knowledge, tomorrow or later this week.”

  “An excellent idea, Mrs. Chapin. Bed?”

  “Most definitely bed.”

  20

  Four days after Monica’s death, Meg found herself sitting at the table with her third cup of breakfast coffee with nothing to do. For all of her life she’d been busy—first school, then school plus after-school activities, then college, then a job, followed by another job. And now farming. Orcharding? She’d been prepared for the hard work, or so she told herself, but not for the downtime, like right now in winter. Maybe she should try dairy farming—the cows needed milking year-round, didn’t they? But she dismissed that quickly: cows were messy, and she wasn’t a big fan of manure. Cleaning up after two goats was plenty for her.

  She should be sightseeing. Catching up on her reading. Reupholstering her tattered furniture. Just sitting didn’t work for her. And Seth had gone off to do man things somewhere else. Bad Meg—sexist! Doing plumbing things? Official Granford things? Anyway, he wasn’t around to play with, so it was up to her to entertain herself, or use her time wisely. While trying to avoid thinking about Monica Whitman’s untimely death.

  She was both relieved and dismayed when she looked out the door to see Larry Bennett. She wanted to see him, wanted to talk to him, but she wasn’t sure what she should say—or shouldn’t say. But he’d seen her sitting there, so she had to let him in.

  “Hi, stranger!” Meg greeted him. “You haven’t been around much this week.”

  He shrugged off his coat. “You didn’t say you needed me. Did I mi
ss something?”

  “No. I think everything’s covered. You want to sit down, have some coffee? Or do you have other plans?”

  “I can sit, sure. Feels kind of funny, you know. I mean, I’m working for you, and you’re paying me for it, but right now there’s not much to do.”

  “I know. I was just complaining to myself about the same thing.” Meg hesitated before saying, “Listen, Larry, you should talk to Art Preston—he’s the local police chief. He’s been trying to reach you.”

  “Why?” Larry asked.

  “Christopher told him that he suspected that Monica Whitman had died from colchicine poisoning, based on her symptoms. The lab confirmed it, and the lab told the state police. You worked with colchicine at UMass. But rather than throwing you under the bus and telling the state police, Art wants to talk to you. Will you? If you don’t, it looks suspicious.”

  “Huh,” Larry answered unhelpfully. “Okay.”

  Okay? Meg said to herself. Okay, yes, I’ll talk to Art, or okay, I hear you? Still, she’d done her duty. “Good. Things will get busy soon, won’t they? When do we start pruning?”

  “In a few weeks, depending on the weather. You want to get it done before bud-break.”

  “That’s about what I figured.” Meg stood up and put on more water to boil, then filled the coffeemaker. While she worked, she said, “You haven’t been in touch with the pickers yet, have you? I know, it’s kind of early to be thinking about the harvest, but I’d hate to find out they’d agreed to work for someone else.”

  “I don’t have their contact information. And they don’t know me. How do we handle that?”

  At least he’d said “we.” “How about this—I write to them, or maybe see if I can call Reynard, who’s the foreman, and introduce you and explain what’s happened—heaven forbid they should think I fired Bree—and then once they know who you are, you can take it from there?”