An Open Book

by Sheila Connolly

  Which was letting in the freezing January wind. “Uh, come in, I guess. Will this take long? Because I’m expecting a plumber any minute.” She hoped.

  “I’d be delighted. And I won’t keep you, but I’d like to explain exactly what it is I’m doing.” He stepped into Meg’s hallway, and she slammed the door shut behind him—the slamming part was necessary if she wanted the warped, if authentic, four panel door to close at all.

  “Take a seat.” Meg gestured vaguely toward her front parlor on the right. The lumpy furniture was draped with drop cloths, old sheets, and anything else Meg could find, since she had been scraping, spackling, and sanding for a couple of weeks now. “I’d offer you some coffee, but my sink is stopped up and I don’t want to run any water until I know what the problem is.”

  Christopher was still standing in the middle of the room looking around with clear admiration. “Grand old house, isn’t it? My sympathies on the plumbing problem. Drains are a constant torment.” He rubbed his hands briskly. “Well, I don’t want to take much of your time, so let me get right down to it. I can’t believe you don’t know about the orchard. You haven’t seen it?”

  “I don’t know where to look,” Meg said. “Where is it?”

  “To your west.” When Meg looked bewildered, Christopher waved toward one side of the house. “Up that way. It runs from the top of that rise down to the highway, Route 202. Surely you’re familiar with that. Roughly fifteen acres, and you have perhaps a hundred and fifty trees, primarily apple. And we—by that I mean the research group at the university—and the Tuckers, and the . . . let me see . . . I think it was the Lothrops before them, have been managing it for more than twenty years.”

  Meg nodded. “I guess that explains it. My mother inherited this place back in the eighties, and I don’t think she’s been here since. She just sticks the rent checks in the bank. But I found myself at loose ends recently”—no reason why this nice stranger needed to know she’d been downsized out of her job—“and she thought it might be a good time to finally fix up the place and sell it, so here I am. So, what is it you want from me?”

  Christopher cocked his head at her, like a friendly sparrow. “Well, my dear, first and foremost I’d like to introduce you to the treasure that you own.”

  “Now?” Meg’s voice rose in disbelief. It couldn’t be more than twenty degrees outside.

  “Why not? It’s far easier to distinguish trunk and branch configurations when the trees aren’t in leaf.”

  “What about my plumber?” Meg sputtered.

  Christopher smiled. “When did you call?”

  “About half an hour ago.”

  “Then I’m sure he’ll be along in an hour or two. Plenty of time!”

  Meg considered. The less-than-appealing odor of whatever was seeping out of her sink was beginning to filter through the house, even though she had shut the doors to the kitchen. Just like the front door, the kitchen doors of the two-hundred-year-old house didn’t fit very well. Moreover, she hadn’t been out of the house for—she stopped to count—three days, and some bracing fresh air wouldn’t hurt. She could watch for the plumber from outside. And she had to admit she was curious. It had never occurred to her to check out what lay on the far reaches of the property. Since she had arrived she had been focused on the house, and that was more than enough to keep her busy.

  “Okay, I’m game.” Obviously the right answer, if Christopher’s delight was any indication. “Let me get my coat.” And gloves. And scarf. And hat. Taking a walk in western Massachusetts in winter involved a lot of preparation. She slipped her cell phone into her pocket along with her house keys, and returned to the waiting Christopher, who was bouncing like an eager spaniel. “Ready.”

  Outside, Meg pulled her balky door shut and followed Christopher as he set off at a brisk pace, up the low rise toward what he had informed her was west. When he noticed her lagging behind, he slowed and waited for her to catch up. “Forgive me. I spend so much time outside like this, I forget that some people aren’t as accustomed as I. You’ve been here how long?”

  “About three weeks. Since just after the New Year, when the lease on my apartment ran out.” Meg was happy to note that she wasn’t panting—much. Maybe vigorous home renovation was good exercise. “I figured I’d just camp out here and get to work. There’s plenty to be done.” More than she could have imagined.

  Christopher continued to pepper her with questions, not even slightly out of breath. “So you’re telling me that you’ve never walked your property?” His tone implied that such an omission was inconceivable.

  Meg smiled into her coat collar. “No. I’ve had plenty to work on inside. The house is in rather bad shape, but I was hoping to list it for sale before summer.”

  “Then at the very least you’ll be here to witness full bloom—that’s the middle of May around here, weather permitting. It’s truly lovely, you know. Of course, I may be a bit biased, but I think an orchard in bloom is one of nature’s wonders, all the more precious because it’s so brief a phenomenon. Not that an orchard in fruit isn’t equally lovely in its own way.”

  “Christopher, you’re not from around here, are you?”

  “Ah, you’ve caught the accent. No, my dear—I was born in England, but I’ve been here for most of my life now. And yourself?”

  “I grew up in New Jersey, but I’ve been living in Boston since college.” She paused to catch her breath. “What is it you’re doing to the trees? You’re not spraying them with anything nasty, are you?”

  “Oh, no, no. In fact, we spray as little as possible, or preferably not at all, although I’m afraid some spraying is unavoidable in apple management. I’m in integrated pest management: working with nature and natural enemies, and spraying only when we have no alternative. You’re not familiar with the process?”

  “No—I’m a city girl, through and through.”

  “Ah, well, you can learn. Here we are!”

  They had reached the crest of the rise, and the land sloped down before them. Meg could see sparse traffic moving along the highway maybe five hundred feet distant. Between where she stood and the highway, neatly spaced rows of trees spread out in a long, narrow strip parallel to the highway. The trees were uniform in height, although they varied from slender young trees to craggy gnarled ones whose age she could only guess at. She could see a few lingering, shriveled apples on nearby branches.

  “So this is it?” she said.

  “It is indeed. Isn’t she grand?” Christopher spoke with a paternal pride.

  “Grand” would not have been Meg’s first choice of word. “I guess. Sorry, but it looks kind of dead.” Now that she was here, she realized she’d been driving right by it for weeks, and it had never even registered on her radar. An orchard. Her orchard. It had taken her a while to even get used to the idea of owning the barn behind the house (although from the way it was leaning, she wasn’t sure when it would stop being a barn and start being a pile of rubble). But an orchard was a living thing, with a past and a future. It needed care and attention, as Christopher seemed to be telling her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what that meant—dealing with the house was more than enough for her at the moment. But still . . . her own apple orchard. It was an appealing idea. Oops, Meg, bad pun. She tuned back in to what Christopher was saying.

  “Oh, not dead at all. Just dormant. Wait a month or two and you’ll see.”

  “How much land does this take up?” she asked.

  “As I said, about fifteen acres. It’s about a quarter mile to the next property there, to your north.”

  Meg could feel Christopher’s eyes on her, anxious. It was obvious that he really did care about this field of scraggly trees. “Well, then, tell me about it. What am I looking at? What’s so special about this orchard?” Meg asked, her breath forming clouds in front of her face.

  “Ah, my dear, where to begin?” Christopher all but rubbed his hands in glee. “This orchard has been here nearly as long as the hou
se. No, the individual trees aren’t two hundred years old, but some of the species have been planted and replanted over time. You’ve got some real treasures here. Tell me, what do you see?”

  Meg, bewildered, turned to survey the trees before her. “They’re, uh, trees.”

  “Yes, but look closely. You see that one there?” He pointed, and Meg followed his finger obediently. “Stayman Winesap—see the thick trunk, the slightly purplish cast to the bark? And over there, Rome Beauty—you can tell by those drooping limbs. What do you know about apples?”

  “Only what I see in the supermarket—Delicious, McIntosh. Aren’t there some new ones with funny names? Mutsu, or something like that?”

  Christopher snorted. “Dreck. Commercial pap. Bred for their ability to withstand shipping across country, only to sit in warehouses for months on end. By the time they reach a store, they all taste like packing peanuts. You, my dear, are in for a treat come harvest time. There’s such an array of flavors—subtle but delightful. I envy you the experience of encountering these for the first time. Ah, hold on!” He swung a small pack from his shoulder and rummaged through the contents. He emerged with an apple about the size of a baseball and shaded from red to a speckled yellow. Christopher polished it on his pant leg and offered it to her with a flourish. “Try this.”

  Meg took it from him. “Do I eat it?”

  “Of course you do.”

  “What is it?” Meg thought it was a good idea not to eat things she couldn’t identify, especially when they had been given to her by someone she’d met only an hour earlier.

  “Baldwin. Originated not far from here, in Massachusetts, in the eighteenth century. Very popular in the early twentieth century, until it got squeezed out by the McIntosh. Harvested that one myself, right here, in early November—it’s a keeper. Try it.”

  Holding the apple in her gloved hand, Meg took a bite. The skin was thick and resistant at first, but the flesh inside was coarse and juicy, with a spicy tang. It bore no resemblance to any apple she had ever bought in a supermarket. “Wow. It’s good.”

  “Of course it is. It hasn’t spent six months in a shipping container or a warehouse.”

  “I have these in the orchard here?”

  “These and many other varieties. As part of my job, I seek out and preserve old varieties that are in danger of disappearing forever. There are still many old stocks, lurking around the countryside here. Now that technology is improving, we need these forgotten varieties for genetic crossbreeding, to try and put the flavor back into this country’s apples. And I fear it is nearly too late. I’ve seen far too many trees or even whole orchards fall before the bulldozers of progress. But there is much we can learn from the old orchards, and it’s a shame to lose them. Why, you even have a quince, over there toward the road.”

  A quince? Meg wouldn’t know one if it bit her, or if she bit it. Her fingers were getting numb. “I’m sorry, but I really should go back and wait for the plumber. Is there something you want me to do?”

  “I’m hoping you’ll allow me and my staff to maintain our study program here. We won’t be in your way.”

  “Sure. Of course. Do I need to give you official permission or something?” It wouldn’t bother her if there were people wandering through her apple trees—she couldn’t even see them from the house. And she needed some time to think about whether having an orchard on the property was good or bad, in terms of selling the house. And how she felt about it.

  “That’s grand! We did negotiate a formal agreement, oh, years ago, when we first started using this orchard. I believe it was the Warren sisters who agreed to it? It might be wise to draft a new one for you to sign, if you don’t mind.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.” Meg couldn’t bring herself to worry about giving away rights she hadn’t known she had.

  Christopher beamed happily. “Wonderful! I’ll let our department chair know, and we’ll set the wheels in motion. Thank you so much! I’ve been a bit concerned because we need to start pruning soon. I’ll send you some reading material so you can familiarize yourself with what you have. Ah, I can tell you’re chilled. Let me walk you back to the house.”

  As they made the easier downhill trip, Meg asked, “What about the apples? What happens to them when they’re harvested?”

  “The Tuckers sold them to a local cooperative.”

  Meg laughed. “Funny—they never mentioned that to my mother. And she thought she was doing them a favor, keeping the rent low.” They reached her front door. “I’m glad you stopped by, Christopher. I’ll look forward to seeing what happens in the spring.”

  “It’s been my pleasure, dear lady. And you’re in for a treat!”

  Keep reading for an excerpt of Sheila Connolly’s first Museum Mystery . . .

  FUNDRAISING THE DEAD

  Available in paperback from Berkley Prime Crime!

  The sight of Marty Terwilliger charging into my office with fire in her eyes was never a good thing, but it was particularly unwelcome right now, as I was trying to put the finishing touches on the grand gala planned for this evening. Tonight was a big event, a really big event, and I was in charge of making it happen. The venerable Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society in Philadelphia was celebrating its 125th anniversary as the guardian of the historic treasures of Philadelphia and the surrounding counties. We were expecting nearly two hundred people, which would set a new record for a Society event.

  Our famed vaults housed at least two million books, documents, and ephemera, ranging from manuscript letters signed by William Penn and George Washington, to advertising flyers from late-nineteenth-century hatters, to financial records for several of the long-defunct companies that had put Philadelphia on the map of the commercial and industrial world. And that’s not including our fairly respectable collection of paintings, silver, clothing, and some truly weird artifacts (like a horse’s hoof made into an inkwell with silver fittings). The Society’s stately neoclassical building had been constructed to reflect the seriousness of its purpose, and loomed over a neighborhood that had seen many transitions, both good and bad, and had weathered them all.

  I’m Eleanor Pratt—Nell to my friends—and I’m the director of development for the Society. If that job title means nothing to you (I get a lot of blank looks), it means I’m a fundraiser. I’m the one who writes those begging letters you get from nonprofit organizations every couple of months. It’s not my name at the bottom—oh, no, it’s the president’s, or, if your bank balance runs to seven figures or you’re sitting on your great-grandfather’s priceless library of Americana, the president’s and the board chair’s. But I’m the one who writes the letter, and also makes sure that there is a current address and the correct, intimate salutation on each one (Dear Binkie, et cetera), and that there is enough of the good stationery to print them all, and that the president actually gets around to signing them (well, most of them—my staff and I usually end up doing a bunch), and that they get into the mail, with postage on them. I’m the invisible person who keeps the money flowing.

  I’m also the one who, when I say I’m a fundraiser, you run screaming from, your checkbook tightly clutched in your hand. Why would anyone go into fundraising? What starry-eyed college student ever said, with a gleam in his or her eyes, Gee, I want to beg for money when I grow up? Well, my answer is simple: I was an English major in college. Need I say more? I had drifted into development after a few years of trying to find an academic job, and then discovered that I liked the work. I’ve been at it for more than a dozen years now, and at the Society for the last five of them. In addition to sending out endless mailings and grant proposals, and currying favor from potential donors, party planning is one of my responsibilities. And finally, after many, many months of agonizing over the theme of the evening, the perfect font for the invitations, the menu selections, the arrangement of the tables, and dozens of other details, here we were, just hours away from the anniversary gala.

  Now, however, instead of tal
king to the caterer just one more time to be sure he had the head count right; instead of counting the wine bottles that the liquor store had just delivered; instead of supervising the tables and plates and glassware that were at this very moment being off-loaded in the back alley, I pasted on what I hoped was a sympathetic smile and welcomed Martha Terwilliger, aka Marty.

  “Hi, Marty. What brings you here so early? The party doesn’t start until six.” It was barely past three, though I needed every minute between now and then.

  Martha Terwilliger was a board member—actually, a third-generation board member; her grandfather had been president of the Society in the distant past, and her father had grudgingly accepted a board position as an inheritance—and she took it quite seriously. She was fiftyish, with a brusque, wry manner and a sharp intelligence, and related to half of Philadelphia. Following the disintegration of her third marriage, she had decided that she needed some focus in her life, and she had adopted the Society with a vengeance. Her father, upon his death several years earlier, had bequeathed to the Society his vast collection of family papers—records that went back to the original Terwilliger settlers, in the early eighteenth century, and included one of the great leaders of the Revolution, Major Jonathan Terwilliger, as well as a host of lesser dignitaries and movers and shakers of Philadelphia political, economic, and social life. The collection was huge, a true treasure trove, and it was quite literally priceless.

  Marty’s father had also left an endowment to support the daunting undertaking of cataloging the Terwilliger papers. Unfortunately, the endowment had produced only enough income to cover a cataloger’s pay for a couple of days a week; as a gesture in recognition of the importance of the papers, the Society was underwriting another day or two, bringing the position up to bare full-time status. A few months ago we had hired Rich Girard for the position, fresh out of college, and he had barely scratched the surface. Marty, annoyed at the glacial pace of progress, had decided to step in and get to work herself. Luckily, she was smart and persistent, and it was possible to visualize an end to the project . . . some five or ten years down the road. In any event, Marty was now bearing down on me with a full head of steam.