“Yes, sir,” Detective Bump said. He turned to Moira. “As I was explaining to your husband before you came in, it was a Blazer, like yours, only black, a year older. Same brand of tires. But belonged to that minister, the one with the aliases, Arnold Wickham his real name. We’ve got him in custody, but not for long. He’s wanted in five states. The only thing here is, well, we can’t prove if he was the one driving. He says not. Says he let some of his church members drive—now and then, you know. So .. .” He bit into the apple, murmured his pleasure through appled teeth.
It was finally coming together. Moira took a bite of the Russet she’d been squeezing in her hand. The flesh was firm and sweet, it gave her succor. “You mean,” she said, choosing, chewing, her words—she had to be sure everything was clear—”that it wasn’t Stan’s vehicle at all that hit that woman—it was that minister’s? And the fibers you found that matched the coat that woman was wearing were on the minister’s front bumper? Which means that Stan”—she glanced at her husband; was he frowning, after all this good news?—“is cleared?”
“Yeth, ma’am,” the detective said through his apple. He was standing now, offering to shake Stan’s hand. But Stan’s hands were clutching the walker, his legs failing him. “Gotto proo it,” he was arguing, “proo is tha man, tha minster dri-ing. Oh course he dri-ing!”
Bump looked at Moira for interpretation.
“Stan says of course it would have been the minister driving. It was his car. It was full of women. Haven’t you asked them?”
He had, he said. “Every female member. Actually there were two men among the members, but we don’t have the names. The women say they don’t remember who was driving. They say he’d let others drive the car to pick up signs, that sort of thing.” He paused, swallowed the mouthful of apple. “But ma’am, sir, we’ve got him on ten other counts. He’ll be punished, you can be sure of that. He’s up for murder on one of the counts, if we can prove he shot that doctor down in Birmingham. We know he wounded a Canadian doctor. He goes on trial there next month. He’ll get his comeuppance.”
“Goto proo it,” Stan insisted. “Proo he wa dri-ing!”
Detective Bump blew out his cheeks, waggled his head. He’d brought good news and now they wanted more. More than he could give. “We’ll keep trying, you can be sure, sir. We’ll try to determine who was driving. That’s the best we can do.”
At the door he looked to Moira for help. “We’ve questioned every active member,” he said. “No one will talk. I don’t know what more we can do. At the least he was an accessory to the fact.” He had the apple core in his hand; she wondered if he wanted to go home and plant it. “We can’t even call it homicide, you know, ma’am, it could have been an accident. She could have run out, sudden-like, into the road and the driver didn’t see.”
“But she was struck from behind—the autopsy determined that. And the car wouldn’t be going too fast in that parking lot— it could have stopped for a woman passing. It had to be deliberate. Well, keep trying,” she said, and held out her hand for the apple core. He smiled, and put it in his pocket. He didn’t want to trouble her.
“Thank you anyway,” she said, “for coming to tell us,” and he took her outstretched hand.
When he left, her palm was full of apple seeds. She took it for a good omen.
Chapter Seventy-five
It was time, Moira decided, to talk to Stan. He’d had good news, he might as well hear the bad. “Sit down, Stan,” she said. “I want to tell you about Adam Golding. About why he did this to us. Not that what he did excused anything, oh, not at all!”
“The poin’,” he said, “get to the poin’.”
So she would—she did, and quickly. “He hanged himself,” she told Stan. “That boy, Trevor, hanged himself. Adam told Emily Willmarth that. Trevor was his half-brother, you see. I never knew that, did you? That Trevor hanged himself?” Stan’s shocked face told her that he didn’t. “He was young, Stan, and full of remorse, hurt, guilt—oh, I’m sure of that! He loved Carol, that’s what Adam told Emily. He loved our Carol. We have to ...” She stopped. She was going to say, We have to forgive, not persecute, but Stan knew that. Deep in his heart, he knew it. He was thinking about it now, she could see from his tortured face, what he’d done: the harassment, the lawsuit. Keeping the boy away from the funeral, she remembered that, too. Stan had made a phone call. ...
“I’ll get us both a cup of hot chocolate,” she said. “It’s chilly out there today!” She wouldn’t say any more unless Stan brought it up. But he shook his head at the mention of chocolate; turned away, head hanging. He needed to be alone, she knew that. He needed to think. He had all the pain he could handle for now. His orchard damaged, the stroke, his head man in intensive care, and the shock of hearing about the suicides, his role in them ...
She watched him shuffle off toward his window seat. He dropped heavily into it, put his head in his hands. She sipped her hot chocolate. He sat with his thoughts for a long, long time. She scrubbed the kitchen floor, ran the dishes through the dishwasher. Finally the house was quiet, the cardinal was outside with his lady cardinal at the feeder. The Butterfield twins passed by the window with a large crate of apples. The crate tipped and an apple fell out. “Hey!” Stan stood up with a shout.
“Wano ge dress,” he told Moira, “go out ina orshar. Hafto, wi Rufa gone ...”
“Then go. Go, they need you,” she said.
It was the last day of picking. The boss should be in charge. Both bosses, she decided, and she stuck a feed cap on her disheveled hair, pulled the visor tightly down on her forehead. She’d be ready when Stan was.
Chapter Seventy-six
After school on Friday Emily got off the school bus at Seymour Street, near her sister’s apartment. Tonight was the harvest supper, she had to make a salad to share with the others. But first she had to see Sharon. She had to talk to her, try to straighten out things in her head, come to terms with them. But, as usual, Sharon was racing about the place, boiling applesauce for the baby girl, changing the toddler’s diaper. “He has no interest whatsoever in the potty,” she complained. She held up a soiled diaper. “The portable potty,” she described the diaper. “For boys on the go.”
“Sharon,” said Emily, easing into a chair with her bandaged ankle. “I need to talk.”
“Stinky, stinky,” Sharon told Robbie, and the boy grinned and ran away, bare-bottomed. Sharon chased him with a clean diaper.
“I need to talk. Please, Sharon. I need your help.”
“Just a min,” Sharon said. “I want to hear, I really do, we’re in a bit of a mess at the moment.”
Sharon changed the diaper and the child sprang away, ran to the TV, and turned it on and off, on and off. Sharon shrugged. “I give up. Let him break the damn thing.” She put her hands on Emily’s shoulders. “Look, Emily, I know it’s hard for you. I know you had feelings for that guy. I saw you together one time downtown, first at Amigo’s, and then going into the Alibi. You didn’t know I was there. What’d you use, a fake ID? That wasn’t Pepsi-Cola you were drinking.”
“Sharon, I’m not here to listen to a lecture. I need to know why he did it, why he drove into the lake like that.”
“He was scared, that’s all. Scared shitless. He couldn’t face the bars—I mean the steel ones. A life in prison. Maybe he couldn’t face his family. Have you met them?”
“No. His father came to Vermont after they dredged up the car, took Adam’s body back to Connecticut. He didn’t want to talk to us.”
“Of course not. Terrible, what his son did. And then driving into the lake like that. My God! Maybe Adam had a death wish. It happens. It was lousy, that’s all, for all of you.” Sharon pulled the child away from the TV “Enough, Robbie. Here, play with your telephone.” Upstairs the baby girl was waking from her nap, screaming for “Mama, Mama.”
Emily clomped upstairs behind her sister. “But he had me, Sharon. He loved me, he told me so. The night we—we were together.”
Sharon wheeled about on the stairs. “You slept with him? I thought Wilder was your man. My God, Emily, you hardly knew Adam!”
“Don’t get all moral on me, Sharon, I was in love with him. I don’t sleep around. Wilder and me, we never once—I mean, not all the way. But Adam was different. I loved him, Sharon.”
At the landing Sharon took her sister’s hands. “I didn’t know that, Em. Hey, I didn’t know it was that far gone. Oh, sweetie ... But you don’t love him now, do you? I mean, we’ve got a heavy issue here. Em, you have to let it go.”
The baby’s cries increased in volume and Sharon released her sister. “Come tonight, okay? Around nine o’clock? When the kids are in bed, we can talk. Okay, Em?”
“Okay”
Emily left Sharon’s place with the question burning in her chest. Did she love Adam now? Could you love someone who’d caused a man’s death? Stabbed another man and then drove away? What if they hadn’t crashed into the bushes, slowing the car so she could get out? Would he have driven her with him, into that cold lake?
What was it like, she wondered, to drown?
Out in the street a boy roared past on a motorcycle, his red hair bushed out under the black helmet.
“Oh, Adam,” she whispered. “Why did you do it?” Bartholomew’s kind, wrinkly face flashed into her mind’s eye; then Rufus, lying bleeding on the bundkhouse floor; then Moira Earthrowl, struggling to survive a daughter’s death, an orchard’s ruin—the white apple flesh bruised and brown from worms and maggots.
And suddenly she felt betrayed—as though a handsome prince had opened his arms to her, but once she was inside his embrace, he’d turned into a raging, avenging beast.
The motorcycle disappeared around a bend, but long afterward, while she stood there on the sidewalk, she could hear the earsplitting grind of its engine in her head.
Chapter Seventy-seven
Colm was getting nowhere in his interview with Wickham. The man was full of false pieties. He was actually proud of what he’d done: stalking a Canadian doctor, shooting him in the leg; “saving” (as he termed it) women heading into Planned Parenthood clinics. “I wouldn’t so much as offer a handkerchief,” he declared, blinking those hard-boiled eyes, “to a wounded provider.”
He sat there like a wounded martyr himself, a crucified Wickham. Outside the town jail, where they were holding him before giving him up to authorities in Alabama, five women, true to the end—Bertha among them, the hypocrite!—were praying. Wickham had God on his side: His squared shoulders, the upthrust chin, all declared his righteousness. Right and wrong, absolute and unchanging. Only one shiny black wing tip, fidgeting on the hardwood floor, cast doubt on his probity.
Colm wanted to walk out right then, leave the fellow to the FBI, but he hadn’t asked a key question: about the Earthrowl orchard, the April spraying. Adam’s father had told police his son was home at that time, not in Vermont at all. Who could have done it, then? Not Rufus, he was sure, who wanted the orchard pristine for his heavenly apples! Colm asked the question. He got an answer half expected, but nevertheless stunning.
“It was simply a matter of substituting the Roundup for the usual fungicide,” Wickham said. “Cassandra did that. She knew the orchard, she and Rufus Barrow had the same grandfather. It was my idea, of course.” He smiled his pearly white smile.
“It was for the greater good,” he proclaimed. “You might not understand. And you know, don’t you, that Earthrowl’s brother is a murderer?” When Colm made a sound, he held up a hand. “An abortionist, yes. You didn’t know that?” He looked pityingly at Colm in his kelly green corduroys and scuffed boots. “Those of us destined for Paradise will do all in our power toward that glorious end.”
“It doesn’t matter that people’s livelihoods are destroyed in the process, their lives?” Colm thought of Aaron Samuels—out of the coma, yes, but his profession lost, his good health gone.
“Lives? But that wasn’t my church. When we saw that other forces were at work—”
“By ‘other forces,’ you mean another man? Adam Golding: felling trees, spraying more poison, spreading maggots? He worked right into your hands, did he? Did your dirty work for you?”
“God’s work, yes. God works in mysterious ways, He—”
“Right,” Colm said; he’d go to mass Sunday; he didn’t need a sermon today. He had one more question. “Who was driving your Blazer? The night Cassandra was killed?”
Wickham shook his head, he was smooth as black ice. “Cassandra and I had stayed behind to pick up the signs and crosses. There wasn’t room in the Blazer—too many church members. We arranged to go back to the church in her car. I wasn’t looking to see who was driving mine.” He spread his hands to show how magnanimous he was, how trusting.
“You must have seen Cassandra struck, then, if you were standing there; you must have seen the Blazer drive away. Which one of your, um, members would have done that? Would have hit a human being and then driven away like she was some small animal in the road?” Colm was angry now, angry at the man’s lack of concern, his cool in the face of tragedy.
“I told the police what I saw,” Wickham maintained. He sounded almost bored. “I had gone back into the store to leave pamphlets. When I came out... I found Cassandra.” He paused, made a steeple out of his hands. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”
The black wing tip was tapping out a beat now. Colm checked his watch, switched off the tape. He’d had enough of Wickham. The man was sick. Colm was glad he’d be taken away.
Wickham called to him as he started out. “You can lock me up, but you won’t stop me,” he warned. “There’s another soldier ready to take my place. Another soldier of God. We’re at war, you see. A war against Satan. A war against sinners like you.”
Outside, Colm took in gulps of fresh air.
He smiled to see Honey Fallon swinging along up the walk. She was wearing a pink pantsuit; her hair was in the usual upheaval. “Hi, there,” she said. “I sure enjoyed that butterscotch sundae. It stayed with me all day. Look!” She pointed to a stain on her blouse that she’d washed “in vain,” she said.
“Honey,” Colm asked, “were you in that church Blazer the night Cassandra was killed?”
“Why, sure, I was. You mean before or after she got it?”
“Both. I just saw Wickham, your sainted minister. He claimed he didn’t know who was driving.”
“Why, honey,” said Honey, “it was Rufus, that’s who was driving. It was Cassandra called him, made him quit work at five-thirty.”
“Whoa. Why didn’t you tell me that before? Or tell your husband?”
“But you never asked! Either of you. Anyway, I didn’t see anything—except Rufus when he got in the driver’s seat. I was in the back—there were eight of us crammed in there, some of us on thin cushions. If someone hit us from the rear—curtains!” She drew an imaginary veil across her face.
“But Rufus didn’t stop. No one saw her running out in front of the car?”
“Wee-ell, I heard someone up front holler, felt a bump. Rufus said he’d hit the curb. It was getting dark by then, you know. Then the minister started hollering, claimed Stan Earthrowl had hit her and run. But later Roy said she was hit in the back. That was weird, wasn’t it? I suppose she was headed for her car. Well, it’s all over now.” Honey stifled a yawn. “Golly gee, I was up half the night—Roy snoring? I bought him one of those anti-snore gizmos, he won’t wear it, says it pinches his nose. Well, nice to see you, Colm. Glad you guys pinched that devil. Still…” She hesitated. “He sure was good-looking. I mean, he could be on TV.”
“Oh, he will be. He will be on TV,” Colm assured her, and headed toward his car.
“Keep praying, ladies,” he told the group of kneeling women as he passed by. “He’s going to need your prayers.”
“Colm, it’s not what you think,” Bertha said, getting up with a groan, stumbling after him. “We were praying for Rufus, and then someone drove us here. .
..”
But Colm waved her away.
Chapter Seventy-eight
Ruth was fixing a large leafy salad with onion rings and red pepper and ripe red tomatoes out of her own garden for the harvest supper. Emily had promised to do the salad, but the girl had come home from school and gone directly to bed. She wasn’t feeling well, she said, her ankle hurt. Ruth sensed it was more mental than physical: the shock of the stabbing, the abduction, the Volvo sinking into the lake. Of course, Emily hadn’t gotten completely over that boy. Even killings and suicides couldn’t change feelings that quickly. When it was over, this harvest supper, she’d sit down with Emily: They’d have a long talk, mother and daughter.
The phone rang. Things always interfering: with thoughts, with resolves. If she wasn’t careful, the time for Emily would slip away. And self-healing could leave scars.
“I’m coming over, Ruthie,” Colm said, “just wanted to warn you. I’ve been invited to the harvest supper. But afterward, I want some time. With you, alone. We need to talk, Ruthie. It’s hell living alone, don’t you think so? No, don’t answer. I won’t ask now. I’ll be over in ten minutes. Oh, and Ruth? I found out something. It was Rufus driving that Blazer. Yup! It was Honey told me. It was just before she defected. Honey was sitting in the rear, felt a bump, couldn’t see what, who it was.”
“Oh,” Ruth said. “No accident, you think? From what you told me.”
“My thought exactly. Great minds? Rufus didn’t want his orchard turned into houses. This was his chance. Make it look like an accident.”
“Will it stand up in court?”
“We’ll have to see, won’t we? When he gets out of the hospital. He’s gaining, I understand. . . . But those women—some of them must have seen her killed. The ones in the front. Why, you could arrest the whole bunch for collusion, accessories before the fact! They all wanted the orchard for a path to Paradise, right? Hmm. I wonder exactly where Bertha was sitting in that Blazer. Don’t make me go back there and ask. Please, Ruthie?”
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