Death of a Bad Apple (18 page)

His eyes narrowed. He glanced around at the five of us, then called out, “Where is she!” He held up the mangled camera, his face twisted in anger.

“Who?” Aunt Abby asked. “Honey? She's still at the sheriff's office.”

“No, not her. That witch who's trying to turn us all into her minions. Paula!” He nearly spat her name.

“She's upstairs . . . ,” Aunt Abby began.

Adam headed toward the staircase.

“Good,” he said, holding up the broken camera. “I have something of hers I want to return.”

Uh-oh. He looked as though he was going to do a lot more than just return what looked like Paula's busted camera.

Detective Shelton lunged forward and grabbed Adam by the arm, swinging him around before the man could take the first stair step.

“Hold up, buddy,” the detective said.

Adam shook his arm free and glared at the detective. In the short time I'd known Adam, he'd never shown such emotion. “I'm not your buddy, and you have no jurisdiction here,” Adam spat, “so butt out of my business.”

Whoa, this was a new side of the man I'd thought was a timid mouse.

“Let's take it down a notch,” Detective Shelton said, his low tone soothing. “I get you're pissed about something, so why don't you tell me what happened? Maybe I can help.”

Part cop, part negotiator, part therapist—no wonder Detective Shelton was so good at his job. Out of
the corner of my eye, I caught Aunt Abby beaming at the way he was handling Adam.

“This is none of your business,” Adam said. He looked at the rest of us as we stared at him in shocked silence. “That goes for the rest of you people. None of you outsiders know anything about what goes on in Apple Valley. All this trouble started when those Eden people came sniffing around, lying about who they were and what they wanted, trying to change our way of life. Now look what's happened. Nathan Chapman is dead because of them.” He looked up at the first-floor landing. “Because of
her
!”

“What the hell is going on down there?” Paula stood at the top of the staircase, straining to look down at the small crowd. Her eyes flashed when she saw what Adam held in his hand. “Oh my God! Is that my Nikon? What have you done to my two-thousand-dollar camera, you jerk!”

Paula headed down the stairs dragging an Yves Saint Laurent suitcase. When she reached the bottom, she let go of the luggage handle and held out her hand for the camera. Adam plopped the broken pieces into her open palm.

“There you go,” he said with a strange grin right out of a horror movie.

Paula looked livid as she absorbed the condition of her expensive camera. “Why, you son of a . . .” She raised up the jumble of metal and plastic and swung it toward Adam's head. He ducked just in time and bits of the camera flew past him, hitting the far wall. The pieces clattered to the floor in a heap.

“Detective!” Adam pointed an accusing finger at Paula. “She just tried to kill me! Arrest her!”

Ah, so now he wanted the law involved.

“Like you said, I don't have jurisdiction here,” Detective Shelton said, repeating Adam's words back to him. “And she didn't hit you, so I think we should just let the woman go ahead and leave.”

“The sooner, the better,” Adam said with a snarl.

Paula shot a daggered look at Adam. “You need to get a life. You've been drinking too much of your own apple hooch and it's made your brain wormy. And by the way, you're going to pay for my camera. My lawyer will see to that.”

“Go ahead and try, witch,” Adam countered. “You can't prove I did anything to it. Maybe I found it after some vandals had gotten to it, and I was just trying to return it to you, like any good citizen would do. Not that you'd know about that.”

Paula shook her head. “Wise up, old man. Eden has spent over a decade developing the Eden Apple and it'll be on the store shelves all over the country. That's because they're perfect. All you have to do is look at them. And it's people like you and Honey who are the bad apples, spoiling the barrel for the rest of us.”

With that, she grabbed her suitcase handle and high-heeled her way through the open front door. I caught a glimpse of her unlocking her late-model Volvo just before I closed the door.

“Wow,” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted from all the drama. “I need a glass of wine.”

“Why don't we all go back to the dining room?” Detective Shelton said. “Adam, you too.”

It was more of a command than an invitation, but the detective said it so smoothly Adam didn't seem to notice. He headed in, the detective ushering his way.

“I think there's a bit more pie, Adam,” Aunt Abby said, playing the role of hostess in Honey's absence. He gave a single nod and Aunt Abby ducked into the kitchen. Jake and I sat down at the table opposite Adam and Detective Shelton while Dillon quietly slipped out and headed for the stairs. I hoped he'd remember to do the research on Paula I'd asked for, as well as Honey, Red, and Adam. Maybe he'd come up with something so we could end this nightmare.

“Adam,” the detective said, “you want to tell me what happened between you and Paula Hayashi?”

Before he could answer, Aunt Abby brought in the warm pie slice and a fork for Adam. The rest of us poured ourselves some wine—all but the detective, who accepted a cup of coffee from Aunt Abby. Adam took a bite, then nodded, either as a thank-you for the pie, a response to how much he enjoyed it, or as an answer to the detective's question regarding what had happened between him and Paula.

When he finished the first bite, he said simply, “She played me.”

“How so?” Detective Shelton asked.

Adam glanced over at Aunt Abby, who'd taken a seat at the end of the table; then he looked at Jake and me. “You all saw her. She came on to me right off the bat. Pretended she wanted to know about my farm
and the apple business for some phony article she and that Roman character were supposedly doing. She said she'd be taking pictures of me picking apples, driving the tractor, having a glass of apple cider. She promised it would be in this big glossy magazine and all over the Internet.”

“We
all
believed her and Roman,” Aunt Abby said. “We had no reason not to. We were duped too.”

“Yeah, but she made a fool out of me. She acted like she really liked me. I shouldn't have been so stupid. I mean, what would a young, pretty city woman like her want with an old country guy like me? But like an idiot, I fell for that snake in the grass.” Adam pushed the unfinished pie away, as if he couldn't stomach any more.

“We've all been there, Adam,” the detective said, obviously trying to show empathy for the guy. “When you talked with Paula, did you learn anything that could help with these murders? Anything that might give Sheriff O'Neil a clue?”

Adam wrinkled his brow and thought for a few seconds, then shook his head. “Not that I can think of. She asked me a bunch of questions about the farm, how I processed my apples, what I thought the place was worth. Things like that. I thought it was all background stuff she was gathering for the story. Now I think she was trying to feel me out about whether or not I might be in a position to sell.”

“Did you give her any indication you would?” Jake asked.

“No,” Adam answered. “Although I did mention I
was worried about the drought we're in. If it continues, my farm and a bunch of other farms around here could be in trouble. She seemed real interested in that, but she never asked me directly if I would sell the place. If I didn't know better, I'd figure she had something to do with the drought, just to run us apple people out of business. But of course, she can't control the weather.”

“But she might have planned to capitalize on that,” Jake said. “How bad has the water shortage been?”

Adam shrugged. “Bad. We farmers are trying to stay optimistic, but it's getting harder as the drought lingers on. We had this festival to kick off the season and get the tourists up here, but if some of the apple farms have to close—or sell—the tourists will stop coming. One of my wells is completely dried up for the first time in twenty years. I lost some of my crop because of that. Some of the trees are still producing, but the apples are hardly worth picking because they're undersized. I've had to let some of my workers go, and they have families to feed. Yeah, sure, I'm worried, but I'm not giving up.”

“Isn't there anything you can do?” I asked, after watching his face tighten as he spoke about his problems.

Adam played with the pie, mashing it into mush. “Actually it's worse than just not having enough water. With the drought, the trees have a harder time fighting off pests and disease. The roots are stressed and the limbs are dying. It's like I'm growing an apple graveyard out there. That's why I'm so angry with
these GMO people. They swoop down the minute we have problems and don't offer to help. They just want to buy us out and get rid of us. We small-scale farmers can't compete with the big corporations.”

“But people still want organically grown fruit,” Aunt Abby offered. “Now more than ever.”

“Yeah,” Adam said, “but only if it's available. Those GMO apples are taking up more and more shelf space.”

Detective Shelton, who'd been listening intently as Adam shared his woes, cleared his throat. “Adam, do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill Nathan Chapman?”

Adam shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I thought maybe Nathan might have killed Roman.”

That made me sit up. “Why?” I asked, beating the detective to the punch.

“Because he hated those Eden Corp people more than anyone. After all, he was head of the Apple Festival, and if there was no more festival, there was no more need for Nathan Chapman.”

“But Paula said he told her he was thinking of selling his farm to Eden Corporation. Maybe he wasn't that interested in the festival anymore.”

“That's bull. The festival—and representing his family's legacy—was everything to him.”

“Was he really descended from Johnny Appleseed's family?” Aunt Abby asked. “Are you sure it wasn't just something he made up to impress the tourists?”

“Why would he make up something like that?” Adam said, frowning.

“I might know why,” came a voice from the hallway. Dillon entered the dining room, holding his open laptop in one hand. He sat down at the other end of the table.

“What have you got?” I asked Dillon, mentally crossing my fingers that he'd uncovered something significant that would help free Honey and identify the killer.

Dillon didn't answer at first. He set down the laptop and tapped on the keyboard. Finally he began reading from the screen. “Okay, well, it's a little confusing, but I found out that Johnny Appleseed had two brothers named Nathaniel—one born in 1776, two years after John, and the second one in 1781. Weird, huh?”

“Very weird,” I said. “Why would the parents give two of their sons the same name?”

“I'm not sure,” Dillon said, squinting at the computer screen, “but they had two different mothers. John's father—also Nathaniel—was married to Elizabeth in 1770 and then he married Lucy Cooley in 1780. I'm guessing the first wife died.”

“You're probably right,” I said. “That happened a lot back then. Women often died in childbirth, or she could have contracted a contagious, deadly disease.”

“Yeah, so anyway, the second Nathaniel Cooley was actually John's half brother from another mother, born in 1781. He's the one who joined Johnny
Appleseed in spreading the word of apples, but he quit after a while, went back home to Ohio, got married, and had a bunch of kids. Guess what he named his son?”

Dillon looked up from the screen to see if we were following.

“Nathaniel,” I said. “So you've been to Ancestry-dot-com, but where is this going?”

“I'm getting there,” Dillon snapped. “And this is way beyond that simple site. So this Nathaniel the fourth, middle name Cooley, was born in 1810, along with four other kids. He lived to the ripe old age of ninety.”

“Wow,” Aunt Abby said. “Hope I live that long.”

Detective Shelton smiled at her.

Dillon continued. “Okay, so they had nine kids, including three boys, one named John Chapman, but no Nathaniels this time.”

“Again, what does all this have to do with murder?” I asked, growing impatient.

“Dude, the Nathan Chapman that ran the festival and was killed, he claimed he was a descendant of Johnny Appleseed Chapman's family, right? Johnny Appleseed never married or had kids, but his half brother, Nathaniel, did, and
his
son, Nathaniel, named one of his three sons John. That's probably the one Nathan claimed was his great-great-great grandfather.”

“Okay,” said Aunt Abby, “you lost me halfway down the family tree.”

“Nathan Chapman really
was
a descendent of a
John Chapman,” I summarized for my aunt, “just not
the
Johnny Appleseed Chapman.”

“Not exactly,” Dillon said.

“What do you mean?”

“All three of Nathaniel's sons died before the age of three, including the one Nathan claimed was his relative.”

“Whoa! I'm so confused,” I said. “What does all this mean?”

Dillon smiled condescendingly. “It means that the present-day Nathan Chapman, who's supposed to be a descendant of the John Chapman family, really couldn't have been.”

“So he lied about being related to the Chapman family?” Detective Shelton clarified.

Dillon nodded. “Dude, not only that, but listen to this. Nathan Chapman isn't even his real name.”

Aunt Abby blinked. “You're kidding! How do you know?”

Dillon shrugged nonchalantly. “It's what I
do
, Mom.”

“That's true! You're a genius, Dillon!” Aunt Abby practically squealed.

“I think we're getting off track here,” the detective said. “If his name's not Nathan Chapman, then what is it?”

Dillon looked at Adam. “Ethan Bramley.”

Everyone turned to Adam. His face was as red as the apple place mat in front of him.

“He's your
brother
?” Aunt Abby said to him.

Adam looked down at his mangled pie. “Half brother.”

“Oh my God,” I said, almost speechless.

“Unfortunately yes,” Adam said, looking down at his mashed dessert. “You guys can probably figure out why I chose not to share that information with anyone. My half brother was a liar and a cheat and knew absolutely nothing about family.”