Rotten to the Core (19 page)

“When the dinner was over, did you and Jason leave together?” And where had Bree gone?

Daphne shredded her napkin. “Yeah. He had a car, so we went back to his place for a while, and . . . you know. Then he told me he wanted to work on something, and I should go home.”

“He didn’t drive you home?”

“Nah. I usually walked—I don’t live in campus housing anymore, and it was only a couple of blocks. But I never saw him again . . .” Daphne appeared to be struggling to hold back tears, and pressed the ragged remnants of her napkin to her mouth.

Meg’s estimation of Jason slipped down another notch. He had used Daphne, in more ways than one, then sent her on her way. “Did he say anything about going out again that night?”

Daphne shook her head vehemently. “No! But . . .” She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip.

“Yes?” Meg prompted gently.

“When I thought about it, after . . . Look, I know he’d been kind of down lately. One of our main supporters at GreenGrow said he wasn’t going to renew his funding. And Jason was getting pressured by the university to finish up or he’d be out. There was just a lot of bad shit coming down, you know? And he was kinda sweet to me that night. So I wondered . . . Maybe it all got to be too much, and he killed himself?”

“Do you think that’s what happened?” Finally, someone who had been close to Jason and might actually be in a position to know. Maybe Jason, seeing his empire crumbling, had decided on one last political gesture, swallowing a lethal dose of pesticide and laying himself down in the middle of an orchard that offended his principles.

Meg could believe it, almost. But then she realized something. “Daphne, how did he get to my place? It’s, what, ten miles from Amherst to Granford? He couldn’t have walked, could he? And wasn’t his car found in Amherst?”

Daphne slumped in her seat. “I don’t know. Maybe he had help. Maybe he asked someone else . . .” She dissolved into a sobbing lump, and Meg felt as though she had kicked a puppy. An annoying puppy, perhaps, but one who didn’t need any more pain.

“Were Jason and Michael close?” She had to say something to shut off Daphne’s tears.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, once. Maybe not so much lately. But they were still tight.”

Could Michael have helped Jason kill himself? For the good of GreenGrow? Meg had a feeling that Michael had come to regard Jason as more of a hindrance than an asset recently. But that was still a long way from helping Jason kill himself . . . or killing him.

At least Meg’s interruption had had the desired effect. Daphne was mopping her nose with the sodden napkin, but she seemed to be under control again. “Hey, thanks for listening. I’ve been spending so much time with Jason that I guess I kinda lost touch with most of my women friends. And you seemed so nice, coming to the wake and all. I mean, you never even knew him.”

And I truly wish we had never crossed paths
, Meg said silently to herself. “I’m sorry I never had that opportunity. Clearly he will be missed.”

“Yeah.” Suddenly Daphne bounced out of her chair and started pulling on her coat. “Look, I’ve gotta go. I really appreciate you listening. See you.”

Before Meg could protest, Daphne was out the door, leaving Meg bewildered. Also, leaving her with the check, although that didn’t surprise her. Had Daphne been embarrassed by her frankness with Meg, whom she barely knew? She was apparently friendless and still heartbro ken about Jason’s death.

After settling the bill, Meg drove back to Granford in a pensive mood. She arrived at the house to find Seth leaning against the tractor, grinning. As well as two goats in the pen next to the driveway.

“Goats?” she protested, climbing out of the car. They looked kind of familiar.

Seth grinned like a mischievous boy. “When we went over to pick up the tractor, Florence said she was going to sell them to the Greek restaurant in Hatfield and they’d be on the menu next week. If you don’t want to keep them, I’ll find another place for them.”

“Oh,” Meg said. She stared at the two animals, who returned her gaze—with rather peculiar eyes. Horizontal pupils? They looked alien. “I guess they can stay there for now. Will that fence hold?”

“I’ll check it out, but it looks okay. And there’s the shed there. I think somebody back a ways used to keep sheep in this field.”

“What am I supposed to feed them?”

“When there’s grass they can forage, but it’s still early. There’s a feed store on the highway towards town. I can pick up some hay and some grain feed for you.”

Wonderful
, Meg thought. One more expense she really didn’t need.

Seth was still talking. “Just give them a few days, see how they settle in. Kind of makes the place seem more like a real farm, doesn’t it?”

She hated to disappoint Seth. He was so pleased with his surprise. “I guess. I don’t have to clean up after them, do I?”

“No. And you don’t need to milk them either, at the moment.”

That hadn’t even occurred to Meg. “You mean they’re both female?”

“Yup. Male goats stink—I wouldn’t do that to you. In case you want to know, the bigger one is a Nubian. I’m not sure what the other one is.”

Chalk up another set of new facts. “Fine, whatever. Just make sure they can’t get out, will you? I don’t want to go chasing goats all over the neighborhood. You have any other bright ideas while you’re at it? Chickens, maybe?”

“Maybe. Hey, you might like them. Plenty of eggs.”

Meg sighed. “Can I just get through one apple harvest before I decide to become a theme park for agricultural America?”

“Sure. Look, let me go get the feed, and then I’ve got a job in Chicopee. You and the goats can get to know each other.”

“Sure.” After Seth left, Meg walked over to the wire fence—which looked none too sturdy—and contemplated the goats. Together the goats walked over to the fence and looked up at her expectantly. “Hi, goats. Do you have names?” The goats continued staring, but the younger one butted her head against the fence. “Am I supposed to pet you?” Did goats bite? Spit? Meg had heard that llamas spit. She felt a tug and realized that the smaller goat had managed to reach through the fence and grab a corner of her jacket.

“Excuse me, that’s my jacket. Give it back.” Meg pulled, and Smaller Goat released it. Meg could have sworn the goat was smiling at her.

Meg sighed again and realized she was doing that altogether too often. Now she had to go inside, boot up her computer, and research goats.

What had Seth been thinking?

Meg let herself into the house to be greeted by Lolly, who sniffed her suspiciously. Maybe female goats weren’t as pungent as males, but cats had sensitive noses. Lolly turned tail and disappeared toward the living room at a trot. Meg made herself a cup of tea and then followed.

She had a couple of hours of peace, something to be treasured. Bree was still living part-time on campus; Seth was off on a job. Meg knew that such solitary moments would become increasingly rare as the apple season progressed. Part of her wanted nothing more than to curl up with her tea and a book, but another part itched to dig into the stacks of historical documents in the boxes scattered around the room. That task would be both enjoyable and useful. Decision made, Meg sat down and booted up her computer.

Ruth Ferry had given her some insight into the relations between neighbors in the past century. It seemed to Meg that people had been more aware of each other in the past—although of course, there were fewer of them back then. Right now Meg couldn’t even name her nearest neighbors, with the exception of Seth over the hill. But Ruth had also mentioned the memories and tales that had been passed down in her family; Ruth could remember what her grandparents had said about the Warrens, who had lived in this house more than a century ago. Meg had to admit she was curious now. Who were they? What had they been like, and how could she find out? Were there any hints in the boxes of musty papers at her feet?

One way to find out
, she thought. She donned her cotton gloves and dove into the box she had already begun to sort through. Such a jumble of materials—she could understand why Gail was swamped. Meg was intelligent and computer literate, yet after three hours she had made little progress in cataloging the items in the boxes she had. She didn’t want to guess how many hours it would take to go through just those four—and how many more boxes were there? And how many people willing to do it?

She was hungry and cranky. Lolly had stationed herself at Meg’s feet, waiting for dinner. Meg wished someone would come along and hand
her
a plateful of dinner. But at least she could point proudly at the one box she had sorted and made basic data entries for. And she had turned up a couple of treasures along the way: old photos of her house, with indistinct figures she had to assume were Lula and Nettie, the sisters who had been the last Warrens on the property, in long black dresses, standing in front of the house along with an unidentified man in a hat and a reclining dog; and an indistinct photo of what was labeled “Warren’s Saw Mill” in pencil, showing a tangle of unfamiliar equipment, with the house—or the one next door?—in the background. Men rendered ghost-like by the long exposure moved about the machinery, planing the boards that had probably gone into one or another renovation of the house, or other houses nearby. All in all, a good day’s work.

“Dinner, Lolly?”

The cat’s ears pricked up, and she stood up and headed toward the kitchen. Smart cat.

Meg awakened in the dark. She checked her clock: not even six, and the sky was barely light. Why was she awake?

The answer came quickly, as she heard the goats bleating in the pasture. Goats, indeed. What was she supposed to do with goats? She had no idea what kind of care they required. And didn’t she have enough to keep her busy at the moment? Why were they making noise at this ungodly hour? They couldn’t possibly be hungry again, could they? She had seen Seth spread hay and fill a large pan with the grain he had bought at the local feed store. Had Florence been neglecting them? Were they starved? How was she supposed to know? Or maybe there was an intruder. Was there such a thing as watch-goats? Reluctantly Meg hauled herself out of bed, disturbing Lolly, who had been curled into a snug ball near her feet. The cat gave her a baleful glare and went back to sleep.

Downstairs Meg put on water for coffee, then shrugged into her coat and rubber boots and went out to investigate the commotion. The goats trotted eagerly toward the fence when they saw her. She checked the pan that had been full of grain the day before: only half-empty. So they weren’t hungry, even though they were still looking at her expectantly. Lonely? But they had each other. Bored? What was she supposed to do to keep goats entertained? “Hey, guys, think you can keep it down until the sun comes up?”

They didn’t move, and she found their stares unnerving. Bad enough that she talked to her cat, but now she was initiating a conversation with a pair of goats. Maybe she really was crazy. At least there were no near neighbors to overhear her—or the goats. They could just learn to entertain themselves. The tough-love school of goat rearing.

She could hear the kettle in the kitchen whistling. “I’m going back inside now,” she told her audience. “Try to amuse yourselves, huh?”

Meg detoured to retrieve the morning paper from the head of the driveway. She was still learning her way around the Springfield daily paper—she missed the
Boston Globe
, but that paper didn’t provide much information about what was happening in her end of the state, and she hadn’t bothered to subscribe. She had the odd feeling of floating between two worlds, her old urban one and her new rural one. At the moment she didn’t feel like she belonged in either.

She had finished reading the paper and had cleaned up the kitchen when Bree arrived at the back door.

“Come on in. No classes today? You want some coffee?”

Bree sidled in. “Nope, no classes, not today. I thought I ought to check in here, since things are speeding up in the orchard. We’ve got to put together a spraying schedule. And I brought over a few more boxes of my stuff. What’s with the goats?”

“Complicated story. I’m still trying them out, so to speak, but they came with the tractor. Do you know anything about goats?”

“Not much. They’re nosy, and they get into things. And they make a great jerk—you marinate the meat with hot peppers and stuff and then grill it. The tractor was my next question. Where’d that come from?”

“A friend of Seth’s found it and got a good deal for me. Or so he says. Please tell me you know something about driving a tractor?”

“Only since I was seven.”

“Thank goodness!” Meg handed her a cup of coffee. “Can you teach me?”

“No problem. Hi, Lolly.” She greeted the cat and scratched behind her ears. “Hey, what’d you do to the floor?”

“Peeled off all the floor coverings. I have to strip it or sand it or something, but I wanted to find out what kind of shape it was in before I decided what to do.”