Sour Apples

by Sheila Connolly

  “Do you think it was just a troublemaker trying to make the biggest mess possible, or did it look like this person was looking for something?”

  “I really can’t say.” Lydia sipped her coffee, her eyes distant. Then she shook herself. “I’ve been putting this off too long, and I don’t have any excuses anymore.”

  “Well, it’s not much fun to do it alone,” Meg said. “I don’t know what you want to keep or get rid of, but at least I can sling boxes around for you and carry trash down.”

  Lydia impulsively reached out and laid her hand on Meg’s. “I appreciate that, Meg. I hate to ask Rachel—she’s got the B and B and the kids to worry about, and she’s too busy. So’s Seth, for that matter. I mean, he’s got the business, and now he’s trying to take that in a different direction, and he’s got his responsibilities to the town, which he takes very seriously. There’s not much left over for…a personal life.”

  Meg wondered what Lydia was trying to say, although she thought she could guess. Did she want to get into it right now? But was there ever going to be a better time? She and Seth had been involved for almost a year now, and their relationship seemed to be moving forward in fits and starts. Maybe it was time to get this all out in the open.

  Meg stared into her cup as she framed her words. “Lydia, are you trying to ask what’s going on between me and Seth?”

  “Yes, I guess I am,” Lydia said, smiling. “I don’t want to pry—after all, you’re both adults, and you don’t need me meddling in your lives. But at the same time, sometimes I wonder if Seth was, I don’t know, damaged by what he saw of my relationship with his father. We didn’t have the best of marriages.”

  “You know, Lydia, Seth doesn’t talk much about his father. I don’t even know his name.”

  Lydia stared at Meg. “Oh dear. I hadn’t realized that. It’s just…well, I’m not sure where to start. Cal—Caleb. It was an old family name. He died just over ten years ago from heart failure. He was barely fifty, but he didn’t take care of himself, and I couldn’t make him change his ways. Cal was a stubborn, angry man, and when it came to his health it was as though he was mad at the universe for giving him the heart problems and he was going to thumb his nose at whoever was in charge. He paid the price.” She sighed.

  “I’ve almost never seen Seth angry. Does he take after you, then?”

  “Actually, I think he’s more like his father than me, but Seth fights very hard to keep his temper—in fact, all his feelings—under control. He’s a typical first child, always trying to manage things, take charge. His brother Stephen was a typical middle child, and Rachel was the baby, and a girl. Seth tried to intervene between Cal and me, which I truly regret. For one thing, it was useless. For another, he shouldn’t have had to bear that kind of responsibility, and we shouldn’t have put him in that position.”

  “Was Cal…abusive?” Meg asked tentatively.

  “No, not physically. But he did like to keep us all under his thumb. For example, he didn’t want me working outside the home, but he was happy to have me keep the books for the business, because I was free labor. He was never as successful as he wanted or expected to be. Seth didn’t want to go into the business originally, but he had no choice—we needed the money. There were some very unhappy years in there.” Lydia hesitated a moment. “It doesn’t reflect well on me, but to be completely honest I was relieved when Cal died. It meant I didn’t have to spend so much energy trying to keep him happy, or at least not angry. I could finally get a job of my choosing. Seth could finally start trying to figure out what he wanted.”

  “Do you think he has?”

  Lydia smiled ruefully. “I’m not sure. You know he was married, but he and Nancy were never on the same page when it came to their ambitions. Again, I didn’t want to meddle.”

  “I’ve met Nancy, and I think you’re right, if that’s any consolation.”

  “I’m not saying I was particularly fond of her, but I’m sorry that it didn’t work out, for Seth’s sake. It kind of put him off relationships, at least until now.” Lydia took a breath. “Look, Meg, I don’t want to speak out of turn, and I don’t want to put you on the spot, but I know my son really cares about you. The thing is, he puts so much energy into running everybody else’s lives that he forgets to take care of his own. Maybe he’s just paralyzed by his past, or he’s afraid it’s too late or something stupid like that.”

  There were so many ways she could respond to this, Meg thought. And suddenly she was tired of being cautious. What was she waiting for? And why?

  “Lydia, I think I love Seth, and I think he loves me. Okay, we’ve both been burned in the past, and we’ve made some errors in judgment about the people we’ve been involved with, but that’s no excuse. The fact is, I’m just scared to commit to a long-term relationship. That’s not fair to Seth and I know it.” Meg stopped, surprised at what she had just said.

  “Or to yourself, Meg,” Lydia said gently. “You have so much to offer, and you two are so good together. Maybe you’ve both had issues in the past, but that can work for you rather than against you. Look, my first concern is to make Seth happy. You make Seth happy. So it’s simple: both of you, get over yourselves and get on with your lives! And now I’ll shut up. Oh my, look at the time! That attic isn’t organizing itself.”

  Meg stifled a laugh. “You are such a Yankee, Lydia. As soon as we start talking about personal issues, you get flustered and back off. But I guess I’m the same way. Is it really hereditary?”

  “Probably. Marriage in New England was a practical proposition: you needed a body in bed next to you to keep you warm through the winter, and kids to help you farm, and ‘A’ kind of led to ‘B.’ End of story. Love didn’t have a lot to do with it in those days.”

  “Did you love Cal?”

  “I think so, at least in the beginning. We had some good years. But what did we know? We were barely in our twenties when we got married. I think people kind of become more like themselves as they get older—their personality traits become clearer and more set. The person you think you married turns out to be somebody different. Don’t take that wrong—you and Seth are more fully formed, I think, than Cal and I were.” Lydia set her empty cup down on the table. “Have you finished your coffee?”

  “I have. Let’s tackle the attic.”

  After depositing their cups in the sink, Lydia led the way through the front of the house, up the stairs, and toward the back bedroom. Along the way Meg marveled at how much Lydia’s house resembled her own—which shouldn’t have surprised her, because they probably had shared some of the same builders way back when the Warrens and the Chapins had intermarried. The access to the attic was through a door and up a rickety stair that wrapped around the massive brick chimney in the center of the house, something Meg knew Gail would love to see. Lydia pulled open the door, then fished around inside until she found the light switch. Meg could feel the cold air trickling down the old wooden stairs, which looked like they had never been painted.

  “Ready?” Lydia asked.

  “I suppose. Lead on.”

  “Watch your head!” Lydia cautioned as she started up the stairs. She stopped right at the top, not so much as to let Meg catch up but because there was nowhere else to go. Lydia hadn’t been kidding: ninety percent of the floor space was occupied by…stuff.

  “It was worse before Rachel got married,” Lydia said apologetically. “At least she took her own belongings with her, and then the cribs and other baby things I’d hung on to. And then she scavenged some of the furniture and so forth for the B and B. Still, probably half of this was here when Cal and I moved in. I just kept adding more on top of it. Seth helped me move the file boxes up here, and he’s usually pretty organized with business materials. I’d assume they’re all together, but over the past ten years I’ve managed to bury them. Oops, I forgot the trash bags. Let me run and get them.”

  “Bring some markers, too, so we can label things!” Meg called out to Lydia’s retreating b
ack. She turned back to survey the scene. What little she could see of the architecture again resembled that in her own house: the beams supporting the roof looked hand hewn, although the floor—what was visible of it—had been repaired more than once, resulting in a patchwork of original wide floorboards, mismatched planks, and even some relatively recent plywood. There were stacks of boxes, some topped with large black trash bags stuffed with something—clothes? Maybe some of them could be disposed of. Did the boxes hold books? China? Toys? A few boxes were labeled, but most weren’t. No wonder Lydia hadn’t had the heart to tackle this job.

  Lydia huffed up the stairs again. “Here we go.” She waved a box of heavy-duty trash bags.

  “Where do you think we should start?” Meg asked.

  “We’re supposed to be looking for the business records. I say we clear a path to those. I think they’re over there.” She waved vaguely toward the front corner of the attic. “But let’s sort out what we find as we go. It isn’t often I have slave labor up here.”

  An hour of shuffling boxes—punctuated by rummaging through at least the top layers and adding notations to the outside of the boxes—cleared a path toward a neatly arranged collection of matching banker’s boxes, stacked three high and labeled by year. “I’m impressed,” Meg said. “I wonder if Seth thought he’d need to look at these ever again?”

  “There’s always some chance of liability, I guess. A project you worked on years ago can come back to haunt you. Just like now, possibly.” Lydia stood with her hands on her hips, contemplating the boxes.

  “What kind of work did your husband do, generally?” Meg asked.

  “Primarily residential plumbing, but he worked on some public buildings, too, like the hospital in Holyoke when they remodeled. We weren’t big enough to take on major projects, but he wouldn’t turn down a job if someone asked, although he never liked working for someone else. In any case, the invoices for any job should still be here somewhere. We’re looking to see if Cal worked on the remediation project here in Granford, right? What year was that?”

  “Somewhere around 2000—so we should look a year or so on either side?”

  Lydia nodded. “As I think I mentioned, Seth took over the business not too long after that, so he would have those records in his office, unless someone made off with them. Is that even possible? I mean, this whole thing is absurd. Why steal old records?”

  “I don’t know. We’re just dotting the i’s here. If we don’t find anything, so be it.”

  “Well, let’s get it over with. It looks like 1998 through 2001 are over at the right end.”

  “You want to look at them up here or take them downstairs?”

  “Let me take a look now and refresh my memory. Can you hand me that chair?”

  “This one?” Meg pulled out an old maple chair missing half its caned seat.

  “Yup. Shoot, I’d forgotten the seat was gone.” Lydia took the chair from Meg, set it down on an almost-level patch of floor, and perched gingerly on it. “That’s one of those things I always meant to get fixed, because it’s a nice chair. I think it has a few mates over there somewhere. Have you ever tried chair caning?”

  “Can’t say that I have, but never say never.” Meg retrieved another chair in equally bad condition and positioned it. “Hand me a box. What is it I’m looking for? Or should I say, what would it be labeled?”

  “‘Mass Department of Environmental Protection.’ Or ‘Granford cleanup.’ Heck, I don’t know. Use your imagination.”

  They shuffled through files in companionable silence. Lydia had been thorough when she kept the records and had even included a file summary in the front of each box. Still, not knowing what she was looking for made it difficult for Meg. Most of the files bore labels with names of individual residential clients, but there were a few bigger projects with thicker files. Lydia finished with her box first, since she was more familiar with the contents, and swapped it for another one. A few minutes later she crowed, “Got it!”

  Meg scooted her chair closer so she could look over Lydia’s shoulder. “What is it?”

  “This is a file from 2001, when it looks like Cal was hired by the primary contractor to salvage whatever was still usable from the old factory buildings. That was not long before he died. I’m amazed he actually left a record.”

  “The buildings were still standing then?”

  “Parts of them were. They’d been falling down for years. The town never had the money to raze them, but they had to keep the ground floors boarded up to keep kids out. Finally the state forced them to deal with it, and according to this”—she held up a slightly yellowed invoice—“Cal went in to salvage copper piping and other metal. It must have been a kindness on somebody’s part—Cal was already having heart problems by then, and he wasn’t capable of a lot of heavy work. Pulling pipes for salvage would have been manageable for him.” Lydia sifted through the pages. “It looks like he got paid for about six weeks’ work, at a rate that was more than fair.”

  “Who was the primary contractor?”

  “Something called Pioneer Valley Remediation Company.”

  “Are they still around?”

  Lydia shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t had anything to do with the business in years, although Seth might know. Although there is a Pioneer Valley Construction Management Company that’s pretty big locally. They’re based in Springfield.”

  “So, have we found what we were looking for?”

  “I guess so. It was a short-term job, so I doubt there would be anything more in the files. And that would explain why it didn’t make much of an impression on me, too. Are you getting cold?”

  “It’s not that. I want to know more about that Pioneer company. You have a computer?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll do a quick online search, and if that doesn’t turn up anything, I know people I can call. You ready to go back down?”

  “Sure. Oh, and why don’t you bring that chair with you? I’ll bring this one, too. Maybe if I see them in front of me every day, I’ll remember to do something about them.” Lydia tucked the file under her arm and picked up her shabby chair. “You go down first.”

  Carrying her chair, Meg led the way down the narrow stairs, followed closely by Lydia. Lydia stopped in the hall to turn out the attic lights and close the door. They left the chairs in the front hall and went back to the kitchen, which to Meg felt almost too hot after the drafty attic.

  “Tea? Coffee?” Lydia asked.

  “Tea sounds good for a change. Where’s the computer?”

  “Let me put the water on to boil and I’ll go get my laptop.”

  When Lydia returned, Meg booted up the laptop and began searching. “Okay, here’s Pioneer Valley Construction Management. Nice website. Multiple divisions, including remediation. Privately held…let me see if they list their management team or history…” She clicked through more pages. “No, no corporate information, but let me try something else…” She tapped a few more times and found what she wanted. “Gotcha!”

  But when Meg read through the first few pages, she felt a small chill. “Lydia,” she said slowly, “it looks as though the company changed its name in 1997. Before that it was Sainsbury Construction. The CEO at that time was James Sainsbury.”

  “Rick’s father,” Lydia said. “Interesting. Is that important?”

  “I…don’t know, actually. But think about it. Rick decides he wants to run for office, and then Joyce Truesdell starts complaining about toxic land that his father’s company was supposed to have cleaned up years ago. That could put a crimp in Rick’s campaign, which is just starting out.”

  Lydia looked unconvinced. “But why kill her? Wouldn’t there be easier ways to keep her quiet? Like paying her off? Or buying the land?”

  “You’d think so. On the other hand, Joyce used to be a federal inspector, and maybe she felt some responsibility to make this public, if she suspected that the land was still contam
inated. Maybe she wasn’t happy with just making it all go away.”

  “Possible, but I’m not buying it, not without proof,” Lydia said. “But it might explain why somebody wants to find whatever records there might be. Oh dear.”

  “Exactly,” Meg said.

  20

  Lydia poured a cup of tea for Meg, then sat down across the table from her. Meg was trying to sort out the implications of this unexpected connection.

  “Let’s see if I can put this together,” she began. “Rick’s father used to manage a construction company around here, which morphed into a bigger construction company and changed its name to Pioneer Valley. Your husband worked for them as a subcontractor.”

  Lydia interrupted. “Actually he worked for Rick’s father earlier, on and off. I just hadn’t put it together with the Pioneer Valley name. And, as I recall, it was a pretty informal arrangement. Meg, you have to realize that in this situation, James Sainsbury would have been doing Cal a favor, after he got too sick to really work. That’s why I was surprised to find a record of it.”

  “Was Seth involved?”

  “Not that I recall. He was handling smaller projects, mostly residential. Cal didn’t find it easy to let go of control, so he didn’t share all the business details with Seth or let him handle any of the bigger jobs.”

  Meg nodded. “All right, fast forward to the present. Rick Sainsbury, son of the late owner of Pioneer Valley Construction Management, wants to run for Congress. Joyce Truesdell leases the land that Pioneer Valley was supposed to have cleaned up, and her cows start getting sick. She’s not the type to keep quiet, so she starts complaining, to Seth and to who knows who else. We know she had the cows’ blood tested, and she said she also had the soil tested, although we haven’t found the report. Then Joyce is murdered. Then someone broke into Seth’s office, his house, and your house. All places where there might be records of the remediation project. Which suggests to me that Joyce was killed to keep attention away from whatever is wrong with the land.”