Called Home (An Orchard Mystery)

by Sheila Connolly

  Meg, go to sleep! And to her surprise, she did.

  She woke up the next morning feeling better, and wondering how much of what had happened yesterday had been real and how much was a product of her fevered imagination. Real—ha! Ghosts were not real. She had been letting depression and fatigue and some passing virus get to her, but today the sun was shining. Maybe she should go somewhere, do something, anything, to get out of the house.

  She pulled on several layers of clothes in record time—the heat didn’t penetrate the glacial atmosphere on the second floor—and took the back stairs down to the kitchen, where she put the kettle on to boil. She was rummaging in her refrigerator, hunting for the last English muffin she knew she had seen the day before, when she heard a cautious “Good morning.”

  Meg debated about ignoring the greeting. She didn’t want to hear voices and see people who weren’t there. However, hiding her head in the fridge was not going to solve anything. She straightened up slowly and turned. Yes, there Deborah was, looking no different than she had yesterday. “Good morning to you, Deborah. I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

  Deborah smiled. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me again. It must be difficult, dealing with someone . . . like me.”

  “A ghost? A spirit? I’m not sure what to call you.” The kettle whistled behind Meg, and she turned to pour water over coffee grounds. “I’d offer you a cup of coffee, but I suppose that’s silly.”

  “I appreciate the thought, even if I cannot enjoy the fact of it. But, please, go on with whatever you were doing.”

  Meg finally pulled out the remnants of the loaf of bread in the fridge and popped two slices in her toaster. She poured a cup of coffee, buttered her toast, and sat down at the table. Deborah–whatever there was of her—settled herself in the chair opposite.

  Meg munched, then said, “I was thinking last night—maybe there’s a reason why you’re still here. Generally if a spirit hangs around after death, it’s because of some trouble, or so I’m told. Like the person was murdered and can’t rest until there’s some sort of justice. Does that fit your case, do you think?”

  “Who would have murdered me?” Deborah said, her brow furrowed.

  “I’m thinking it would have had to have been someone close to you. Like your husband. Or his soon-to-be next wife.”

  “Surely not?”

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s not something you want to think about, if you haven’t already. Tell me, were you happy with your husband?”

  Deborah shrugged. “I had no home. I wanted a family. He needed a wife to help him with the farm. Our land adjoined, and mine was better suited for growing. As you’ve seen, there is much low-lying land on this property that is useless most years, even for grazing cows—too wet.”

  “Was he more successful, working the two farms together?”

  “He was. We could support our family well, with a bit to spare. Why would he want more?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me, what was his new wife like?”

  “Sophia? She was lovely, sweet. Young, when they married.”

  “Did she come from town here?”

  “She did. Her father farmed the land that lay alongside Samuel’s father’s fields.”

  “Next to this property?”

  Deborah stared at Meg for a long moment before answering. “As it happens, yes. What are you suggesting?”

  “Did she come with a dowry?”

  “Her father deeded her a lot adjacent to my husband’s, as a wedding gift.”

  “Which made the farm even bigger. And was their marriage a happy one?”

  Deborah took so long to answer this time that Meg wondered if she had offended her. Finally she said, “I cannot say.”

  “Were there children from that marriage?” When Deborah shook her head silently, Meg wondered if Sophia had been little more than a nursemaid to the existing children, and a servant to the house.

  “Tell me—did you have sons?”

  “Two. One inherited this land, the other the property next door. Why do you ask?”

  Time to lay her cards on the table. “Forgive me, but I’m wondering if your husband decided that you’d served your purpose, once he had your land and you’d given him a couple of sons to carry on his name. And whether his second marriage was planned to give him even more land. Was money important to him? Or status, in the eyes of the town?”

  “He had great hopes, but they never came to much.”

  “Deborah, in my world, now, that’s what we would call motive. For murder,” Meg said gently.

  Deborah stood up abruptly. “Pardon me, but you have given me much to think about, and I would prefer to be alone.”

  Meg found she was on her feet as well. “Of course. I understand. And I’m sorry.”

  Deborah vanished in a rustle of half-visible skirts, leaving Meg standing in the empty kitchen. What had she just done? Disturbed the peace of mind of a ghost, who had quietly minded her own business for two centuries? But if Deborah was more than a fever phantom, why had she appeared to Meg now?

  Was there anything she could prove—or disprove—so many years later? If Deborah had been murdered, how would her husband have done it? If there had been evidence once, wouldn’t it be long gone by now? Whatever it was. If it existed. Deborah had said she had sickened fairly rapidly before her death, which suggested poison. Unfortunately, there were no doubt plenty of poisonous plants at hand, for someone who knew what to look for. Easy to find—and easy to dispose of.

  “Deborah?” Meg whispered.

  Deborah materialized in the doorway, and Meg thought she saw a glint of tears. Could ghosts cry?

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I wondered if a doctor had seen you, when you were sick that last time?”

  Deborah gave a short laugh. “We had no doctors. Some of the older women hereabouts knew of healing remedies. In fact, my husband brought one such remedy home for me, and dosed me carefully.”

  “Do you know what it was?”

  Deborah shook her head. “It was in a glass bottle, I know—one of the few we had, a gift. He kept it on the mantel so he would not forget, or so he told me. I do not recall . . .”

  “What?” Meg asked.

  “I have not seen that bottle since I fell ill.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “It was a small thing, no bigger than my hand. A lovely dark blue, molded, with a bird on the side. It had a cork stopper. We had so little that was pretty . . . I was glad that Sophia could not find it, although it was mean-spirited of me.”

  Interesting that the bottle had disappeared. Could it still be somewhere in the house? Why would the husband have kept it? Because it was too valuable to throw away, and he had hoped to retrieve it later? And had he?

  Meg, you are piling what-ifs atop what-ifs. The likelihood of that bottle surviving unfound until now was small; the likelihood that it contained anything other than a harmless herbal remedy, even smaller. But could it hurt to look? “Deborah, did your husband have a place he liked to keep things, important things like legal documents or valuables?”

  “Not that I can recall, although he might not have shared it with me.”

  Where would a man with inquisitive children hide something in a house in the 1820s? Where would the children not go? Or an inquisitive wife? The cellar, Meg decided. Women and children usually avoided cellars, which were dark, damp, and full of spiders. She should know, because she had been avoiding this one. But how was she supposed to find anything there, assuming it had escaped notice for this long?

  But at least she could look. She pulled on another sweater, opened the cellar door, and descended the creaking stairs, clutching a flashlight in her hand. The furnace huddled in one corner, while the middle was taken up by the massive brick piers that supported the central chimneys. And the rest . . . was filled with the trash of ages. Did nobody around here ever throw anything out?

  Meg considered. Whatever she was looking for, it wouldn’t be
close to the furnace, because if the item had been in that corner, it would have been disturbed when the furnace was installed years ago. But there was still a section of floor that was dirt—thrifty Yankees had not spent any more money than necessary. That left her with a choice: Should she look overhead among the ancient wooden beams, or under what little of the dirt floor remained exposed?

  Look up first, she decided—not as messy. She should have asked Deborah how tall her husband had been, but in any case the low joists were within her reach. She felt her way along each beam, finding nothing more than ancient cobwebs and dirt. She went methodically from one to the next, noting various repairs that spanned the centuries. Meg felt a spurt of despair: if there had been anything here, there had also been ample opportunities for it to have been removed or destroyed long ago.

  Wait. As she ran her hand along a roughly planed joist, she found a rectangular plug of wood. What was it doing there? It looked like an old tenon, but she couldn’t see that there had ever been a beam to go with it. She wiggled it and it came out in her hand, a loose block of wood—and there was a space behind it in the joist. Meg stood on tiptoe and reached into the hole, praying that any spiders were hibernating for the winter. Her fingers touched glass, and traced a raised pattern on it. She pulled it out carefully and held it up to her flashlight: yes, it was blue.

  She was torn. She wanted to race upstairs and show it to Deborah. But the fact that it had been hidden so carefully suggested that she had been right: it had contained something that it shouldn’t, and someone had hidden it. She shook the bottle gingerly, but of course it was empty; its stopper had crumbled away. Gingerly she raised it to her nose—and pulled it away again. It smelled old and musty, but there was a hint of . . . mouse? A peculiar sweet note that Meg remembered from her grandmother’s house.

  With a sense of relief Meg climbed the stairs and shut the cellar door firmly behind her. “Deborah?” she said tentatively. Deborah appeared and Meg stared at her from across the dining room, feeling something like pity. How was she supposed to tell her that she thought her husband had murdered her?

  “You found something?” Deborah said. “May I see?” Mutely Meg held out the bottle. Deborah nodded once. “Yes, that is the one. Where did you find it?”

  “It was hidden in a niche carved into one of the beams. The cork’s long gone, and whatever it held has dried up. But there is a smell—maybe you can tell me what it is.”

  “I cannot smell, nor taste, you know. Can you describe it?”

  “It smells like . . . mouse.”

  “Ah,” Deborah said, and shut her eyes. Finally she said, “I would guess it once held a tincture of hemlock. It grew wild along the meadow.”

  “Why do you know what hemlock smells like?” Meg asked, incredulous.

  “It looks much like wild carrot, which from time to time we would harvest and eat. We learned early how to tell the two apart—wild carrot resembles parsnip in its odor, but hemlock, when cooked, smells like mouse.” Deborah’s face twisted.

  “Deborah? Do you think he meant to kill you?”

  Deborah was silent for a few moments, then said, “I do. Thank you.”

  “Thank you? I just told you something horrible.”

  “No, you told me the truth. For that I am grateful.”

  Was it her imagination, or was Deborah becoming fainter? “Wait! I want to know—“ Meg began, but then Deborah was gone, like a reverse Polaroid picture, fading into nothingness, leaving Meg standing there holding the bottle in her hand. She closed her fingers around it: yes, it was real.

  “Good-bye, Deborah,” Meg whispered, setting the blue bottle on the mantelpiece. “Rest in peace.”

  Sour Apples (Preview)

  See below for a preview of Sour Apples,

  the next book in the Orchard Mystery series,

  coming from Berkley Prime Crime in August!

  Chapter 1

  Meg Corey walked to the edge of the orchard, stopping where the land sloped downward to her house below, and turned to study her trees. It was March and just over a year since she had first arrived in Granford to take up residence in a house she’d seen only once before in her life, and she almost laughed now to remember just how naïve she had been at the time. Of course, she had also been kind of stunned by the turns her life had suddenly taken back then: no job, no boyfriend, no place to call home. So Meg had blindly followed her mother’s suggestion to park herself in Granford, a tiny town in western Massachusetts, while she figured out her next move. Her mother, Elizabeth Corey, might even have used the words “find yourself.” Meg hadn’t had the energy either to argue with her mother or to come up with a better idea, so she had moved into the drafty old house, which lacked insulation and adequate heating, in the midst of a cold New England winter. She’d been miserable.

  What a difference a year had made! Meg hadn’t even known there was an apple orchard on the property when she arrived, and now it was her livelihood. She could look at it and tell what tasks needed to be done now that it was early spring, before buds and leaves and apples began to form. She’d harvested a decent crop in the fall, despite a rather scary summer hailstorm, and had sold the apples for a profit. They’d had a string of good weather this month and had taken advantage of it to do housekeeping chores in the orchard—picking up the pruned twigs, turning over the soil as soon as it thawed. As Meg watched, Briona Stewart, her young orchard manager and housemate, appeared in the orchard lugging a bundle of prunings from the trees. There was always something to be done: broken limbs had to be propped up or heartlessly sawn off, fertilizer had to be applied before growth began, and there was the cycle of spraying—nontoxic!—to be factored in. Bree added her trimmings to a growing pile; there were people around the area who liked to use apple wood to scent their fires, and if they were willing to pay a couple of bucks for a bundle of discards, who was Meg to argue with them? Last year’s weeds had been cleared away, and everything looked neat and trim. Meg felt an unexpected surge of excitement. What kind of crop could she hope for this year? She still didn’t know her trees well enough to tell; she was still learning to distinguish among the modern stock and the scattered heirloom varieties that were increasing in popularity, at least in this rarified gourmet patch of western Massachusetts. But she had learned so much in only a year!

  Meg had also decided she liked living in Granford—certainly well enough to stay for a second year, and maybe even longer. She was beginning to feel like the town, whose population hovered around thirteen hundred people, was home; she’d found friends and neighbors . . . and Seth Chapin, who was both of those and more, although they were both still shy of sticking a label on whatever they shared. She was, she dared to think, happy.

  She waved at Bree, who waved back, then Meg turned around to admire her house. It was a sturdy white Colonial with some ramshackle extensions added over the more than two centuries since it had been built by members of the Warren family—her ancestors. Now she knew who they were, had traced the adze marks on the hand-hewn timbers, and could say, “My great-great . . . grandfather did that, he and his sons.” They’d built to last, and here she was, trying to keep the place intact. Structurally it was sound, but she’d had to replace the plumbing and the heating systems in the past year, and she was going to have to work hard to pay off those charges on her groaning credit card. This year she really had to think about getting the roof replaced, and the trim cried out for a coat of paint. But that would all come after the orchard work.

  Originally the house had faced the large barn, presumably with space—or chicken coops or pig pens or privies—between, but since this was New England, some of her forebears had built a series of connecting structures between the house and barn so they could reach the barn without freezing off various essential body parts. Nearest was an open shed, where she and Bree parked their cars and stacked firewood—and junk. Next was a more substantial two-story building that a hundred years earlier had been a carpenter’s shop and which now
housed Seth Chapin’s building renovation business. His office was on the second floor, and the first floor—and a portion of the adjoining barn—were filling up with his miscellaneous building supplies and salvage. Seth was definitely a hoarder when it came to architectural bits and pieces, but Meg had to admit that the mantels and doors he picked up from who knows where looked far too good to send to the dump, and she was sure he would find them all a good home eventually.

  She spied Seth standing in the middle of the driveway, talking to a woman she didn’t recognize. Meg began to make her way down the hill, watching her footing. A warm March meant mud, and she’d learned better than to come up the hill in anything but sturdy muck boots. That lesson had come after more than one slide on her backside.

  It took her a minute or two to reach the two of them, and they were so engrossed in what looked like a rather heated conversation that they didn’t even notice her approach. She hesitated to interrupt but then reminded herself that they were standing on her property and she had every right to be there. “Hi, Seth,” she called out from a few feet away.

  Their conversation stopped abruptly, and both turned to look at her. Meg had been right: she didn’t know the woman. She was closer to forty than thirty, and if it had been another era Meg would have labeled her a hippie who had wandered down from Vermont: her clothes were an odd mix of whimsical and practical, and her long fair hair was held back by a faded bandanna. Meg noticed that under her long cotton skirt, the woman also wore muck boots much like Meg’s own. She looked peeved at having been interrupted.

  “Hi, Meg,” Seth answered. He didn’t seem anywhere near as rattled as the woman, but it took a lot to rattle Seth Chapin. “Do you know Joyce Truesdell? Joyce, this is Meg Corey—she owns this place.”

  “I don’t think we’ve met. Hi, Joyce—I’d shake, but my hands are kind of dirty.”

  Joyce smiled reluctantly. “So are mine—probably worse. I’m a dairy farmer. Let’s take it as a given.” Having observed the social conventions, Joyce turned back to Seth. “Look, Seth, this is my livelihood. If that land is making my cows sick, it’s on the town’s head. I’ve got the results of the blood work already, and I sent soil samples off to the lab at the university for testing at the same time, and I expect those results any day now. If I find out that the land is tainted, when you and the town swore it was fine, you’re going to hear about it.”