A Late Frost Read online

  “So how did this all come about? Did you have family ties here?”

  “Nope. You want the truth? I got fired. I might have screwed up some accounting, but nobody stopped to look very hard—they just canned me, after ten years with the company. We couldn’t make it on Ginny’s salary alone, not in a city. So my dear wife decided to make lemonade from our lemon crop and said getting fired was a great opportunity for us to try something else, make a real change in our lives. I’ll admit I was pretty depressed by the whole thing, so I played along, and the next thing I knew she’d found this run-down orchard in East Nowhere and we were going to be farmers. Not just any old farmers, but organic farmers.” The contempt in his voice was clear.

  “And neither of you had any kind of agricultural background?”

  “Hell, no. About all I knew was the roots were on the bottom and the leaves were on the top. But I didn’t have the energy to argue with her. She was in love with this dump, and we sold our house and used what sorry proceeds we got out of it to buy it. We put a little away, but not enough. I’ll admit this place was pretty cheap, but I’ve figured out why. We had to borrow money from her folks to pay the bills last year.”

  “Well, the orchard had been ignored for a long time—one of you should have realized it would take a little time to bring it back. Is she still in love with the place? Or with the whole idea?”

  Al shrugged. “Beats me. At least we did better than break even with this past harvest, for the first time. But have I seen the light? No way. I don’t much like the country. Or this house.”

  Meg’s opinion of Al was sinking steadily. “Is that why neither of you has made an effort to make friends here? You figure you’re just putting in time until Ginny wears herself out?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’ve told her how you feel?”

  Al stood up and stalked into the kitchen, which still put him no more than ten feet away. “What the hell’s the point? I can’t offer her any other options. I don’t even know if I can get a real job again, after what my old company did to me. We’re stuck. What you see here is all we’ve got in the world. We can’t go anywhere, even if we both wanted to.”

  My, this is going well, Meg thought to herself. “Look, Al, believe it or not, I understand. I got booted from my job, landed here in what you call East Nowhere because my mother thought it was a good idea, and then ended up with a body in the backyard. And then it got worse: I completely disrupted a town meeting and cost the town a major development project. I wasn’t exactly anyone’s best friend. If you want to have a mutual pity party, I’m your girl.”

  Al looked at her incredulously for a moment, then started laughing. “If you’re trying to cheer me up, you’re doing a lousy job. Why the hell are you still here?”

  “I’m no Pollyanna, and it’s not my job to make you feel better. But I know what it’s like to be in Ginny’s position, or something close to it. I wouldn’t have made it through if I hadn’t found some friends. I don’t know Ginny well, but I like her. Problem is, the police who are investigating don’t have a lot of suspects to choose from, and she’s probably high on their list.”

  “Crap,” Al said. “This just keeps getting better. What’s next—a tornado? A plague of locusts?”

  “Well, in the two years I’ve lived here we’ve had a blizzard, a drought, and an insect infestation that took out a lot of our trees. I think we’re about due for an earthquake.”

  Al relaxed and came back to his chair. “Meg, I like you. Since we’re being so open and honest and touchy-feely, tell me why the cops think Ginny could have killed Monica.”

  “This is off the record, Al. If those cops find out I’ve been sharing information, they might arrest me or ship me out of town. I’m not their favorite person. But here’s the deal: Monica Whitman died from an overdose of colchicine.” When Al started to speak, Meg held up one hand to stop him. “Your wife seems to have been handing out colchicine like candy, including to me. Now, I know it’s legal, and I know she says she takes it all the time. The police know she gave some to Monica—they’ve got the box with Ginny’s fingerprints on it. Then Monica died. I think you can see their logic.”

  “I don’t believe this. All we’ve done is mind our own business, and now they think Ginny is a killer? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Believe me, it happens.” Meg took a deep breath. “You do know what colchicine is, right?”

  “Yes. I was in pharmaceuticals, remember? My wife’s been taking it for years, and I wouldn’t have let her do that unless I’d checked it out.”

  “Did you ever tamper with the dosage? Swap out pills? Add something that shouldn’t be there?”

  Al stared at her. “Lady, you must be crazy. Say that to most people and they’d probably kill you and bury you in the backyard. We’ve got a handy swamp just beyond the driveway.”

  Yeah, not too bright, Meg. “My husband knows I’m here.”

  “I’d have to hide your car, too—that might be harder, what with Ginny expected home any minute now. Or maybe she’s in on this and she’ll help? We’ll just tell the kids to watch television while we get rid of the evidence.”

  “At least I seem to have cheered you up, Al,” Meg said, obscurely relieved.

  “And I thank you. Look, Meg, I’m going to tell you something, and I guess I’ll have to trust you that you don’t tell Ginny. Yes, I did tamper with her pills.”

  “What? The stuff’s poisonous!”

  “I know that. But I didn’t boost the dose, I cut it down. She’s been using it for maybe two years now for pain relief, after she found that acetaminophen and ibuprofen didn’t work.”

  “Is she addicted to it?” Meg asked.

  “No, it’s not addictive. I’m not proud to say this, but I was cutting back on what she was taking, without telling her, because I wanted her to feel like crap. I thought maybe she’d come to her senses and decide she just wasn’t cut out for farmwork, and we could go back to our real lives somewhere, and give our kids a normal childhood.”

  “How much did you cut back?”

  “Half of what she was used to. I just swapped out the blister pack inside the box with a different one, and assured her it was just a packaging change when she opened a new one. If, as you say, the box that Monica got from her wasn’t empty, any lab can test the dosage of those pills.”

  It made a weird kind of sense to Meg. Then she realized the ramifications. “So you’ve just conveniently given yourself an alibi if the lab work confirms the dosage of the pills they took from Monica’s house that came from Ginny.”

  “How so?”

  “Monica died from a major overdose of the stuff. She didn’t even finish the pills she had, or at least, there was no evidence of pills beyond the ones still in their packages. Unless she took a whole handful of your doctored pills, as well as a bunch of others, they couldn’t have caused her overdose. Ergo, you and Ginny couldn’t have killed her, unless Ginny had been stockpiling her pills for a long time and somehow force-fed them to Monica.”

  “Ah. Well, I’m happy to hear that, I guess. Are you going to tell Ginny?”

  “I think you should tell her. Tell her how you feel about this whole package. You’re not happy here. Is she?”

  “She says she is, but she’s stubborn. She wouldn’t want to admit she made a mistake. She did it for me, you know—she thought we could get by with earning less money if we went back to the soil, or some such nonsense. I was depressed, and I let her talk me into it.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t think it’s working, financially—never mind the personal wear and tear on us. Maybe you can sit down with her and go over the books. Make some recommendations. Or tell her it’s a lost cause.”

  “If it’s her dream, I don’t want to crush that. If she’s willing, I’ll look at the numbers—that was my area of expertise before I got mys
elf into this. But I’m not going to lie to her. You’re going to have to work this out together, sooner rather than later.”

  “I know,” Al said. He cocked his head at her. “You sure you belong in Granford? Because you seem a lot smarter than most of the yokels I’ve met around here.”

  “Gee, just when I was beginning to like you, Al, you go and say something stupid. You don’t get out enough. You don’t talk to people in Granford. You don’t even know them. What right do you have to judge people here? You’re no prize yourself. At least your wife has a plan, and she’s worked hard to make it happen. You’re just sitting here feeling smug and sorry for yourself. You owe it to her to at least try.”

  Al started applauding, slowly. “Nice speech.”

  Meg stood up. “I give up. It’s too bad, because I like Ginny. I think we could be friends. But I’m not sure that’s possible with you in the picture. Tell her I stopped by.” She stalked out the door to her car. Al made no move to stop her. There was still no sign of Ginny.

  Meg drove home, chewing over what Al had said. She didn’t like him much. He’d been deliberately rude as well as sarcastic. In a way, she could sympathize. He’d had a decent job, and then he’d lost it, and that had started this whole avalanche. He’d implied that wasn’t his fault, but Meg had no way of knowing. Maybe he was an embezzler or a drug addict or he’d groped female staff members. Now he was exiled to a pathetic orchard in the country against his will. And as a result he was sulking: he was letting his wife carry most of the burden, both physically and psychologically, because it was her dream, and definitely not his. How long had they been married? At least ten years, she guessed, based on the age of the kids she’d seen the other day. When had they stopped communicating? Why had Ginny made such an abrupt change? Hadn’t Al said anything at the time? But maybe apathy was a symptom of his depression.

  Did she believe what he’d told her about the dosage of the pills? Probably. He had the know-how to do it. He figured it couldn’t hurt Ginny, although it might make her uncomfortable. He hadn’t counted on her handing it out to other people, but even if he had known, he had probably assumed that the dose was low enough that it wouldn’t hurt anyone else. And he’d probably know how much of a supply Ginny had, and how much had gone missing. Like the box she’d handed to Meg. The cops should have tested that by now. Or would they? They might just have said, okay, colchicine, check, without ever testing the pills themselves and checking dosages. She really didn’t know how official labs worked and how thorough they were, or should be.

  So now she knew that Al Morris had messed with Ginny’s pills, and Ginny had given some to Monica, but the dosage had not been enough to cause Monica’s death, or not by itself. Which left her right back where she had started, with one fewer potential suspect if she crossed off Al. Not worth calling Art about, much less Marcus: let them do their own legwork.

  Seth was sitting at the kitchen table reading a magazine, a cup of coffee beside him. He looked up when she came in. “Good news or bad?”

  “Both, I guess.” She took off her coat and hung it up, then sat down across from Seth. Lolly appeared out of nowhere and jumped on her lap. “Quick summary: Ginny wasn’t home. Al Morris admitted to doctoring the pills, but he said he reduced the dose because he wanted Ginny to feel bad so she’d give up her dream of running a farm, which he really doesn’t like.”

  “You believe him?” Seth asked. “About the pills, I mean?”

  “I do, more or less. He’s depressed and sarcastic and contemptuous of the denizens of Granford—he called us yokels—but I don’t think he’d lie about this. He had to know the police would be looking into all the pills and could figure it out easily enough if they tested them. He could have said nothing to me about any of it, but I think he told the truth. And I think their marriage sucks. They’re not communicating, and they’re pulling in different directions. I kind of read him the riot act about that. Very unlike me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told him he was screwing up. That he didn’t have the right to complain if he’d never told Ginny what he really thought. And then he resorted to, what, reverse-poisoning her to get his way? Taking away a medication she chose rather than talking to her? That’s low.”

  “That’s a bad marriage,” Seth said quietly.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I wish I could have seen you do it.”

  “Seth, if you ever think I’m shutting you out, or manipulating you, say something. Do something. I don’t know where Ginny and Al went off the rails, and I’m not sure it can be fixed now. Let’s not end up in that place.”

  “We won’t. I promise.”

  29

  “So, what now?” Meg asked.

  “What do you mean?” Seth replied.

  “We’re out of suspects.”

  “Meg, that’s not our responsibility.”

  “I know. But it doesn’t seem right. Will there be any kind of memorial service for Monica in Granford?”

  “I really don’t know. The town assembly hasn’t discussed it. Most people here didn’t know her—she’d lived here only a short time. I’m afraid few people would attend.”

  “How sad. Has Art said anything else about her family? Would she be buried here? Cremated? Oh, and what’s happening with Doug?”

  “From what little I’ve heard, he seems to have recovered a bit since Monica’s death.”

  “If it’s Alzheimer’s, it’s going to get worse, isn’t it? Can he function alone? Do you think he’ll want to?”

  “Why can’t you ever ask me easy questions, Meg? As far as I know, yes, Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease, although its course is unpredictable. But it goes only in one direction.”

  “Why do you think they moved here, if they knew Douglas was having problems that would only get worse?”

  “Meg,” Seth said patiently, “how can I answer that? I didn’t know them. Nobody here really knew them, until Monica stepped up to suggest the WinterFare.”

  Meg refused to be derailed. “Maybe she thought that was her last chance to do something for herself, before her husband ate up more and more of her time. But as for coming here, maybe it was money—this place was cheaper than wherever they were before, and they may have been on a fixed income. Or maybe she wanted their friends from wherever they came from to remember Douglas the way he was, not the way he was headed. Is social services taking care of them?”

  “I understand they are. They’re evaluating Doug’s condition, and they’ll help sort out any in-home care, if that’s appropriate. Or find a placement for him.”

  “And they’ll figure out how he can pay for the care he doesn’t even recognize he needs?”

  “Meg,” Seth said helplessly, “I don’t know. We—by which I mean the town—can’t be responsible for him. It’s not our job.”

  “What if it was your mother?”

  “Then I’d take care of her. You know that.”

  Meg summoned up a smile. “Yes, I do. And you’d take care of me. Heck, you’d take care of the whole town if you could, because that’s who you are. I’m sorry—I don’t know why this has got me so knotted up.”

  “Would it make you feel better if we went to see Doug?”

  “Maybe. At least I’d feel that I was doing something.”

  “You haven’t told Art about your conversation with Al, have you?”

  “No, and I don’t think I will. Let the lab do their stuff. Ginny and Al’s personal problems are not police business, unless the two of them want to share. Can we go see Douglas now?”

  “I guess. Maybe take him dinner?”

  “Seth, as you keep reminding me, we don’t have much food in the house. I can take him a cake from the freezer, which wouldn’t involve him cooking or preparing anything. But maybe we should stop at the market on the way home before we starve?”

  “I
t’s a plan. You want to go now?”

  “Yes. I can’t seem to sit still, so I might as well put my energy to good use.”

  “I’ll get our coats.”

  The ride to the Whitman house didn’t take long. There was a car parked in the driveway at the rear of the house, but only the one. But at least the outside of the place looked tidy enough. Meg wondered if the inside had been tended to as well—she shuddered at the memory of the last time she’d seen it.

  Seth parked in the driveway, and Meg got out and collected the carefully wrapped cake from the backseat. She led the way to the front door and rang the doorbell, wondering, as always, if they should have called first. She gave herself an excuse: she had a feeling that answering a phone and understanding who was calling and that they wanted to stop by might confuse Douglas. Seeing her face might make it easier for him to connect the dots. For almost a minute there was no sound from inside the house, but finally she heard shuffling, and then the click of locks. The door opened to reveal Douglas. Meg’s first impression was that he looked better than he had on her first visit: his clothes were clean, his hair was combed, and he seemed to be alert.

  “Hello? Can I help you?” he asked. Then his expression sharpened slightly. “Do I know you?” he asked, looking at Meg.

  “Yes, you do. I’m Meg Corey. Chapin. I stopped by once before, after Monica . . .” Meg realized she didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

  “Monica isn’t here anymore,” Douglas said, as if by rote. “Would you like to come in?”

  “If it’s no trouble. I brought you a cake,” Meg said, holding out her plate with the cake on it and feeling increasingly stupid.

  “Oh, that’s very nice of you. Please, come in. And who is this?” he asked, as if noticing Seth for the first time.

  Seth stepped forward, closing the door behind him. “Mr. Whitman, I’m Seth Chapin, Meg’s husband. She told me she’d met you, so I thought I’d come along and introduce myself. We live fairly close to you, on the other side of the highway.”