Sour Apples

by Sheila Connolly

  Seth glanced at the newspaper Meg had been reading, and his eye lingered on the picture of Rick Sainsbury. He grimaced. “Still hanging with the same old crew,” he said.

  “You know the other guys in the picture?”

  “Most of them. They were all members of the football team in high school. It looks like Rick has gathered together his old posse.”

  “So they’re all still around the area? Who are they?”

  “If I had my old yearbooks handy, I could show you. I think I told you that Rick was the quarterback—they always attract a lot of admirers.” He studied the grainy photo for a moment. “It’s been a few years, but I think that’s Alex Cook there on the left, and Tom Ferriter next to him. That’s Ray Dressel on the other side, with George DuPont. They were all on the team.”

  “What are they doing now?”

  “I haven’t followed their careers. I told you, they were a couple of years ahead of me at school, and they didn’t give me the time of day.”

  Seth’s tone didn’t invite any additional comments, so Meg changed the subject. “What’s all this?” she asked, waving a hand at the stack of paper he had strewn across the table.

  “After I left last night, I started thinking about what you said, about whether this lead issue could have anything to do with Joyce’s murder. I still think it’s hard to make the connection, but I figured I could at least settle it one way or another. So you’d stop nagging me.”

  “Hey, you did promise Detective Marcus you’d look into it, and he didn’t even know about the paint factory when he asked. Look at it this way: you can get ahead of it and present him with the results before he even asks again.”

  “Yeah, right,” Seth muttered. He was in a foul mood today, Meg thought. But he’d had to give up part of his Sunday to rummage through dusty files, so maybe she should cut him some slack.

  “How did you get all these together so fast?” she asked as she settled herself at the table with a fresh mug of coffee.

  “Turns out some of the more recent files were in the basement at town hall, which, if things were different, is where they all should be. There were a couple of other storage sites I knew I could check, and I’ve got all the keys. The town really needs to get its filing sorted out and consolidated. We probably even have the space, if we got organized. What we need is someone to take the time to catalog what we’ve got. But it’s a big job and we can’t afford to pay someone to do it, so it’s pretty low priority.”

  “I can’t argue with that. What’ve you got here?”

  “I think I’ve got everything relating to the original acquisition of the property, which goes back to the thirties, plus the files relating to the Department of Environmental Protection’s notice that they’d found high levels of chemicals—and I quote—that ‘posed a significant risk to human health and the environment,’ through the development of a cleanup plan in the seventies and implementation of the remediation, which was completed just after 2000.”

  “Wow. That sounds pretty thorough. So the DEP did get on the town’s case about the problem?”

  Seth nodded. “They did, and all the documents are here.”

  “Have you read all of this?”

  “Nope, I just located it all and laid it in front of you, like a cat with a dead mouse. Since you offered, I thought we could go through it together.”

  “I love your metaphor. Which part of the mouse do you want to start with?”

  “Let’s start by putting this stuff in chronological order. And you’d better make another pot of coffee.”

  An hour later they had managed to reduce the unwieldy mass of paper into three piles, according to Seth’s rough outline. At some point Bree came in, looked at the stacks on the table, and fled to her room. “Chicken!” Meg called out after her. Bree had a notorious aversion to paperwork. “Now what?” Meg asked Seth.

  “We figure out what we’ve got. Start reading.”

  It took a couple of hours to wade through the piles of documents, especially since much of the language was technical and unfamiliar to Meg. At least she could recognize the term “lead,” which appeared regularly in the later paperwork. She and Seth finished at about the same time.

  “So, what have we learned?” Meg asked.

  Seth stretched and sat back. “You have a pad of paper around here?”

  “Of course. Want me to take notes?”

  “Wouldn’t that be sexist?”

  “Yes, generally, but I’m offering.”

  “I love a submissive woman.” When Meg snorted, he went on. “Okay, okay. I think we can skip the deeds for now. No one has contested the town’s ownership, but it does establish one end of the timeline, and only Gail would have anything earlier. I suppose whoever claimed it on behalf of the town back then knew something of its history, but times were different, and I don’t suppose they were worried about contamination or residues. And that remained pretty much status quo until the 1970s.”

  “Which was when the government got involved?”

  “Yes. In 1975, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection identified soil contaminated with leftover paint pigments on the site. The town was required to do a lot of environmental testing.” Seth leafed through a stack of papers clipped together. “We’ve got soil borings, surface water sampling, and so on. They showed a really nasty mix of stuff, including lead, chromium, arsenic, and cyanide, both in the surface and subsurface soils and in the pond sediment.”

  “That doesn’t sound good. Makes you wonder how anybody survived working at the paint factory, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. To go on, after that we started a dance with the state agencies, and nothing much happened until the mid-eighties. Since no one was using the land, there wasn’t any real sense of urgency, and of course we had to find the money to do the remediation. Then there was another round of samples taken in the late nineties for what was called an ‘imminent hazard evaluation.’ Along the way we started to develop a remedial action plan, which was completed in 2000. And then finally we hired an outside remediation firm to carry out the plan.”

  “Not something a small town can handle on its own, I assume.”

  Seth shook his head. “No way. We don’t have the staff, the equipment, or the expertise to do it.”

  “So what was done?”

  Seth pointed to the third pile of papers. “Those are the reports.” He picked up the stack and leafed through it. “Looks like they excavated a portion of the contaminated soil, treating some of it chemically, built an elevated ‘clean pad,’ and capped the treated soils and sediments so that any remaining chemicals couldn’t leach into the ground water.”

  “Sounds complicated. And expensive. Do you remember any of this happening?”

  “Not really. I graduated from college in 1998 and went to work with my father. He was already sick then, so I was carrying a lot of the weight. I vaguely remember talk of the whole remediation project, but I wasn’t exactly involved, or particularly interested in local events at the time.”

  “And this company the town hired, they took care of it?”

  “They filed all the correct reports, if I’m reading this right. The MDEP signed off on it. The test results are all here. Of course, this is just a first pass, but it looks as though the work got done.”

  “If it wasn’t the paint factory residue, where did the lead in Joyce’s cows come from?”

  “No idea.”

  17

  Seth slumped back in his chair, looking tired and frustrated. “All that running around finding the paperwork, and it proves exactly nothing.”

  “Well, at least it shows what didn’t happen. So you can tell Detective Marcus you tried and give him what you found,” Meg said. She thought for a moment. “Could something have happened in the last decade or two? Like, is someone dumping construction debris or toxic waste on the sly?”

  Seth shook his head. “Joyce told me and Ethan confirmed that they’d submitted samples for a new series of
soil tests, once they’d seen the blood work report, but they were still waiting on the results for the soil. I won’t say that things like you describe don’t happen, but I know Joyce went over the land carefully. She would have found anything obvious. Unless somebody dumped something on the land early this year, after they’d cleared it.”

  “Would the new soil tests show that?” Meg asked.

  “Not necessarily. It would depend on where they took the samples, and it’s a big field.”

  “Where are those results?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll check back with Ethan on that.” Seth shook his head again. “None of this makes sense. The land was clean, and we have the documents to prove it. But the cows’ blood showed lead, and Joyce had the documents to prove that. As you say, something could have been added to the land between those two sets of tests—but what? How did she miss it? And none of it gets us any closer to proving why Joyce was killed.”

  Meg nodded her agreement. “All right, then let’s take it from another angle. If—and I do mean if—somebody was dumping something that contained lead, who are the likely culprits?”

  Seth thought for a moment. “Nobody in town. You know as well as I do that we don’t currently have any industry here that would generate that kind of waste.”

  “Didn’t you say something about car batteries? They contain lead.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “but the procedures for disposing of old batteries are pretty clear, and remember, this is Massachusetts and we regulate that kind of stuff. Besides, you can take your old car battery to AAA or an auto repair store, and when we have a town recycling day, we take them and dispose of them correctly. Of course, some people do get lazy and just toss them into a creek, so I guess it’s possible that the cows could have gotten to a battery that way.”

  “I don’t think I ever asked—how many cows were affected?”

  “Not a lot, but I’d have to check. That reminds me, Joyce gave me a copy of the blood work report, and I think I left it in my office. Be right back.” Seth headed out the back door toward his office at the rear of the property.

  Meg looked up to see Bree tiptoeing down the back stairs. “Is the coast clear?”

  “For the moment. I thought you were staying in Amherst last night.”

  “I came back late.” Bree didn’t volunteer any further explanation.

  Meg didn’t press. “Seth went out to his office to look for something. What are you hiding from? This mess”—Meg waved at the stacks of papers on the table—“isn’t your problem.”

  Bree came down and dropped into a chair at the table. “That’s good to hear. But what is it and why are you poking around in it?”

  “It’s all the documents pertaining to the land leased from the town by Joyce and Ethan Truesdell. We’re trying to figure out what could have made the cows sick. Gail told me a paint factory was once located there, but Seth said the site was cleaned up a decade or so ago, all neat and official.”

  Bree made an expression of distaste. “That’s what the paperwork says.”

  “What, you don’t believe an official government document?” Meg asked, mildly surprised.

  “Ha!” Bree replied. “Grease the right palms and you can get someone to say just about anything you want.”

  “How did you get so cynical, so young?” Meg asked.

  “Oh, come on, Meg. You used to work in banking. How carefully did anyone look at documents there? How do you think this country’s banking industry got into such a big mess and had to be bailed out? Because nobody was paying close attention. They wanted to sign off on deals and make money, so they rushed things through, and now they’re paying the price.”

  “I can’t argue with that, but who benefitted by signing off on this cleanup?”

  Bree shrugged. “Beats me. But I’d take a close look at who was involved and where money changed hands.”

  Bree had a good point, Meg reflected. Just because a form had a government seal on it didn’t guarantee that it was true or accurate. But why would anybody have bothered to fudge documents for a small parcel of land in a small town? It didn’t seem important enough to matter to anyone.

  Seth came back, and Meg could tell immediately that he wasn’t happy. “My office was broken into!”

  “What?” Bree said.

  “That’s awful!” Meg exclaimed.

  “Somebody tossed all my paperwork all over the place. You didn’t happen to hear anything last night, did you, Meg?”

  “Not a thing, but I was exhausted, and my bedroom’s on the other side of the house. Bree, did you notice anything?”

  “Nope,” Bree said promptly. “Everything was dark and quiet when I got in around two. No cars, no people, nothing.”

  Meg turned back to Seth. “Is anything missing?”

  “Not as far as I can tell.” Seth dropped heavily into a chair and rubbed his face. “I have no idea what anyone could have been looking for. I don’t keep money in the office. It’s invoices and plans, mostly. It’s not like there’s a damn thing worth stealing. And I don’t think I’ve ticked anyone off lately, no one I can think of anyway.”

  “Did you call the police?” Meg asked.

  “Yeah, I talked to Art while I was up in the office.”

  “Oh-ho, you’re pulling out the big guns! Straight to the chief of police, for a robbery where nothing got stolen?” Bree said.

  “Art Preston’s a friend, and you know how small the department is—he just happened to be in today. He said not to mess with anything and he’d be right over. I really don’t need this, not now when the business is just starting to get busy.”

  “I’m sorry, Seth,” Meg said. “But I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.”

  A few moments later, Art Preston’s car pulled into the driveway. Meg got up to let him in. “Hi, Art. Long time no see. Seth’s here in the kitchen.”

  “Hi, Meg, Bree. I thought things had been a bit too quiet over this way lately. Seth.” Art nodded toward Seth, standing behind the table. “You said your office had been broken into? Anything missing?”

  “I can’t really say—you told me not to try to straighten it up. Like I told you, I don’t keep cash around, so unless someone was really coveting some antique wainscoting, there’s not much worth stealing. You want to go take a look?”

  “Might as well. I can ask you a few questions later, Meg.”

  “I’ll be here,” Meg replied with a sigh.

  “The fun never ends around here, does it?” Bree said with an eye roll. “At least he didn’t find a body, unless it’s buried under all the papers.”

  “Don’t even joke about it! A break-in happened on my property, and I didn’t notice a thing—that worries me. If it had been a bunch of kids looking to make trouble, wouldn’t they have been louder?”

  “You’re asking me? I’m Ms. Squeaky-Clean. I don’t hang out with vandals. Besides, who would want to toss Seth’s boring office for the fun of it? Aren’t there better places to trash?”

  Fifteen minutes later Art and Seth returned, arguing as they came in the back door. “There hasn’t been any vandalism around town lately, Seth.”

  “Then how do you explain it? Maybe this is the first example. You know, it’s spring and all those hormones are running high.”

  “Hi, guys.” Meg greeted them. “Did you find anything?”

  “Nope,” Seth said, his tone disgusted. “Nothing missing, nothing broken. Somebody just broke in and tossed every piece of paper in the office.”

  “‘Broke in’ might be an exaggeration. That lock was a joke,” Art said, sitting down.

  “I didn’t think I needed a better lock!” Seth protested. “It’s just a bunch of paperwork, half of which I hadn’t even filed yet. Now I have to waste time cleaning it all up.”

  “Well, I’ll take your report so it’s on file, in case there are any other incidents. Meg, did you see or hear anything?”

  “Nope, sorry. I was dead to the world. Bree and I finished pl
anting my new orchard yesterday—a thousand trees. I couldn’t have stayed awake if you paid me.”

  “Congratulations, if that’s the right term for a new orchard. Bree, were you here?” Art asked.

  “Not until around two a.m. I spent the early part of the night over in Amherst. But I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary when I got back.”

  Art sighed. “Seth, I’m sorry, but there’s not a whole lot I can do for you.”

  “I know. I’m just angry, but not at you.”

  Art sipped some coffee. “Actually, I’m surprised you haven’t been pumping me for information about Joyce Truesdell’s murder.”

  Meg perked up. “Do you have anything you can share?”

  “Nope, not my jurisdiction. As usual, Marcus is playing his cards close to the vest, and he hasn’t told me anything. Hasn’t even asked me for anything.”

  “Did you know Joyce?”

  “Personally? Not really. All her local permits were in order, and her vehicles were properly registered. As far as I’m concerned, she was a model citizen. Same with her husband.”

  “You have any problems with illegal dumping lately?” Seth asked.

  Art looked bewildered by the abrupt change of subject. “Nothing major, and that hazardous materials recycling program you started has been a big help. What’s that got to do with Joyce?”

  “We’ve been wondering how her cows got lead poisoning,” Meg said.

  “Lead poisoning? I hadn’t heard about it.”

  “That’s not surprising,” Seth said. “Joyce had just gotten the blood work back on the cows when she was killed. Maybe down the line she might have wanted to file a criminal complaint, but as far as I know she didn’t have a case against anybody yet, much less proof.”

  “You think that had anything to do with her death?”

  Seth shrugged. “I don’t know. She came to me and told me about it because she suspected the land she had leased from the town was what was harming her cows. I said I’d pull together what I could on the history of the site, but I only got around to it this morning. That’s what all this stuff is.” He waved at the piles on the table. “Meg and I have been going through the records.”