“She trusted him?” Marcus glanced at Larry.
“So it seems. And he turned them over to us today.”
“Where’s this guy fit?” Marcus jerked his head at Justin.
Justin finally spoke. “I knew her before she ever got here. We worked at the same paper, but we weren’t exactly friends. There were rumors at the paper that she was working on something big, and she wasn’t around a lot. I started snooping and found she was coming out here, and then she stayed here for a while. I was hoping to get a piece of whatever she was working on, but we never had a chance to talk. After she died, your lot refused to ID the body publicly, which seemed odd to me, so I started nosing around, asking questions. That got me into the house up there, supposedly looking for her, but nobody was saying much.”
“She know you were hanging around, following her?”
“I hope not—she wasn’t supposed to. Maybe I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. Or maybe I wasn’t taking the whole thing seriously. I just wanted a story. I didn’t think about the risks.”
Marcus looked skeptical, but he didn’t say anything. He hadn’t yet touched the papers Art had laid on the table.
“What now?” Seth asked.
Marcus studied him for a moment. “You people have given me a nice tale, about some nasty drug dealers operating out of a rural house in Granford—your house, Seth Chapin. Part of this is based on a lot of traffic coming and going from that house, as reported by your mother. The dead woman was found on your wife’s property. The dead woman was shacking up with your wife’s employee before she was killed. What should I think?”
“You should think we’re trying to help you, Detective,” Meg said. “We’re just giving you the facts we’ve put together. We know you’ve been shut out of a homicide investigation on your own turf, and that doesn’t make you very happy. We have no prior association with these people, except Larry, and we know nothing about drug dealing. All we want is to find who killed this woman and left her in my backyard. And while you’re at it, could you arrest the drug dealers next door? Or won’t the drug unit people let you?”
Marcus took a long swallow of his drink, apparently to stall for time. “Okay, say I believe you, and that you’ve actually put together some evidence. If I went by the book, I’d have to examine it and verify it, if I could do that without tipping anybody off. And then I’d have to plan an approach to the house and its current occupants. I’d have to have checked if they had criminal records or any history with other local police departments. I’m not trying to jerk you around, but this is just standard procedure. And of course you know that the circumstances aren’t exactly normal. The narcotics unit is drawing up its own plans and they don’t want me involved. They figure their drug bust trumps one dead journalist.”
He drained his glass. “So my options are, trot back to Northampton and hand them what you’ve just given me and say, ‘Pretty please, can we follow through on this?’ Maybe, just maybe, they’re ready to make their move and this would fit nicely. Or I hand this to them and they say, ‘Didn’t we tell you to stay out of this?’ Or I take it to the police commissioner and explain the bind I’m in and maybe get permission to do something, which of course would tick off the narcotics unit. By the way, I’m not the commissioner’s favorite person. Plus, she’d score more points with the public if she takes down a drug gang. So what odds would you give for my getting any support for going after your neighbors here?”
“Look,” Art began, “we’re not accusing you of dragging your feet or ignoring this. We know you’re in a tough situation. But what would it take to override that? You want more bodies? Or a whole bunch of local kids who OD’d on whatever they’re selling?”
“An immediate threat. A real and present danger, not a bunch of theories strung together that don’t quite add up to probable cause. A signed invitation from a local drug lord? I really don’t know.”
Meg had been so focused on the discussion that she was startled when the phone rang. She answered it quickly and found it was Lydia.
“Meg, I don’t want to worry you or Seth, but I heard what sounded like gunshots coming from Seth’s house. At least, I think they were gunshots. I tried calling Art but he’s not picking up.”
“Because he’s sitting in our kitchen, Lydia. I’ll let him know. Have you heard any more since the first shots?”
“A couple, maybe. It’s hard to tell—the windows are mostly closed, and I didn’t want to go outside and check.”
“I’ll send Art over right now. You sit tight.”
After she hung up, Meg hurried back to the dining room. “That was Lydia. She thinks she’s heard gunshots coming from Seth’s house.”
Art stood up quickly. “So I’d better check it out ASAP.”
“Want some company?” Marcus asked.
“Sure. If you’re armed.”
“I’m coming too,” Seth said. “It’s my house.”
“So am I,” Larry added. “I live there. I know who’s who.”
“Taking civilians along is not a good idea,” Marcus cautioned.
“We’re coming,” Seth said. “Car or on foot?”
“Why don’t you drive up and block the driveway?” Art suggested. “We’ll go on foot—quieter that way. But I’d better tell my dispatcher what’s up.”
Two minutes later the motley crew took off up the hill. One homicide detective, one small-town police chief, and two civilians—one of whom was her husband, Meg thought, with a stab of fear. These drug people were not afraid of shooting at people, and she hoped that Marcus or Art would at least identify themselves as law enforcement before something awful happened. She shook herself and went back to the dining room, where Justin was still sitting at the table, starting glumly into space.
“You didn’t want to go with the guys, Justin?” Meg asked. “It could make a good story.” Now she wondered if she was being sarcastic.
Justin shook his head. Meg noticed he had refilled his glass. “I’m useless. I mean, here’s the real story—the good guys and the bad guys facing off in the small town. And the whole thing is connected to what happened weeks ago. It’d be a good movie, in the right director’s hands. But me? There’s a hot story up the hill and I’m scared to go watch, even from a safe distance. I think I need to rethink some things.”
“Well, right now you can keep me from falling apart. That’s my unarmed husband up the hill, but I wouldn’t even try to make him stay away.”
“He’s a better man than I am.”
You’ve got that right, Justin, Meg said to herself.
Chapter 27
The next surprise was the arrival of Lydia, who drove into the driveway and stopped abruptly. Meg had the door open before Lydia had climbed out of the car.
Lydia called out, “Did Art go up the hill?”
“He did. And so did Detective Marcus. And Seth. And Larry. What are you doing here?”
“Seth went?” Lydia asked, ignoring Meg’s question.
“Yes. He said it was his house and he thought he should be there.”
“But . . . guns!” Lydia said.
“I know. Did you hear any more shots?” When Lydia shook her head, Meg told her, “Maybe they ran out of ammunition. Maybe they were taking potshots at squirrels. Or maybe everybody’s dead and there’s nothing to worry about.” Her sarcasm seemed to be escalating.
“Please, no! I refuse to consider that. But we’re worrying anyway, right?” Lydia responded.
“Of course. Christopher wasn’t around?”
“No, or he’d have been up there alongside them. We don’t spend all our time together.”
“Seems like more and more. Which I think is great. You want a drink? We’re working our way through a bottle of Scotch. Marcus included.”
“Maybe one. A small one.” By now they were in the kitchen, and Lydia spied Justin at the dining room table. “What’s he doing here?”
“Justin? You know him?”
“I’ve seen him
going into Seth’s house a few times. Who is he?”
“A journalist, or so he thinks. He worked with Jenn in Boston. Or he works at the paper in Boston where Jenn used to work, which is not exactly the same thing. He knew her, and he was kind of following her hoping to get a piece of her big story.”
“Yet here he sits, while the story takes place up the hill,” Lydia said. “Maybe he should reconsider his career choice.”
“That’s what I told him.” Meg handed Lydia a glass half filled with Scotch.
“Oh, my. I’ll have to ask someone to drive me home if I finish this.”
“We’ve got spare beds, if it comes to that.”
Lydia took a healthy swallow of her drink. “I bet the drug police in Northampton are not going to be happy campers, if Detective Marcus and Art have taken the lead here. Unless they insist on prettying up the whole story to make their unit look good.”
“I hope it’s too late to try that. I’m pretty sure Marcus is fed up with their attitude. And Art has a legitimate reason to investigate suspicious gunshots in his own town.”
Lydia took another cautious sip of her drink before asking, “Meg, do you have any reason to think that whatever was going on in that house was the main center of the local drug trade? Or was it just the tip of the iceberg?”
“Lydia, I don’t know. I never knew what was going on up there. I guess I’m going to have to see things differently from now on. That or never leave the orchard.” And maybe wear a bulletproof vest in case of stray bullets?
“I hope we can shut down this drug problem quickly,” Lydia said. “Granford may be small and dull, but there are good people here. I don’t think they deliberately turned a blind eye to what was happening—it’s only that they didn’t recognize it. However this all turns out, I think we’ve lost a bit of our innocence.”
“I know. Maybe I should just introduce you to Justin and let him salvage a bit of his ego by interviewing you. Maybe he can get a human interest story out of it—you know, ‘I Lived Next Door to a Drug Den.’ Preferably after someone else breaks the story. He doesn’t deserve it.”
“It’ll work as a distraction, while we wait.”
“Follow me, then.” She led Lydia into the dining room. “Justin, this is Seth’s mother, Lydia. She lives in the house just down the road from Seth’s house. She’s the person who noticed the increase in traffic along that road.”
Justin stood up politely. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Chapin. There seem to be a lot of Chapins in this neighborhood.”
“Call me Lydia. Yes, there were Chapins here before there was a town, since the later eighteenth century. Are you interested in local history?”
The conversation that followed had an unreal quality. Meg’s attention was divided between Justin and Lydia’s superficial exchange of Granford facts and straining to hear any noise from up the hill—gunshots, sirens, bombs, or anything else. She was worried, despite the presence of two trained and armed law enforcement officials in the mix. But Seth? He was emotionally involved in stopping whatever was going on up there. It was his property, plus he was protecting his mother and his wife—her. Meg wondered which order she would like to see him put those in. If Jenn’s body had been found on the other side of town, would he have cared as much? The councilman/friend-of-Art part of him would have been concerned, but she could have sat with him in front of the fire in their safe, comfortable home and commented on how sad and distressing it was. When it was a comfortable distance away.
“Was that a siren?” Meg asked, after what seemed like an hour of waiting but which was likely much less than that.
“I don’t know,” Lydia said.
Meg swallowed her next thought, so as not to alarm Lydia: if the guys had managed to settle things themselves, would they have needed backup sweeping in with sirens blaring? Or maybe it was the drug unit, miffed at being shut out, and trying to make the bust more dramatic than it actually was. Meg had to admit she simply didn’t know much about police procedure, apart from the strictly local aspects like dog licenses and littering. Maybe Art and Marcus had conspired to arrest all of the occupants of the place—and any unlucky visitors they might have had—and needed to take them to Northampton to interview them. Or maybe it was an ambulance siren, because those earlier shots might have connected with someone. How long did it take an ambulance to arrive from the nearest hospital? Meg didn’t know. She’d rather not know.
Maybe she should start dinner, since racing up the hill to satisfy her own curiosity was definitely not a good idea. She went hunting for a recipe that didn’t require any thinking or attention and could serve a lot of people. Stew. Some kind of stew. Again. What did she have to work with? A foil-wrapped lump of mystery meat in the freezer. A half-full bag of potatoes, only slightly sprouted. Carrots. Herbs? And if it came up short, she could make dumplings. It was a plan of sorts, and would keep her busy. “I’m going to start dinner,” she announced.
“Need some help?” Lydia volunteered. Maybe she’d had enough of trying to maintain a conversation with Justin, who seemed to be wallowing in self-recrimination—or frustration at having blown his big chance. Meg did not foresee a glorious career in journalism for the man.
“You up for peeling stuff?” Meg asked.
“Fine. Anything to keep busy.” Lydia found an apron hanging on one of the kitchen doors and set to work on the potatoes with a peeler.
Justin did not volunteer to help—he was in a funk.
Meg lost track of time, but the stew was assembled and cooking in a slow oven when Meg finally heard voices. She glanced at Lydia. “They sound pleased with themselves.” As in, nobody is hurt or dead, Meg added silently to herself.
“They do. I’ll let them in.”
Max, who had been dozing on the kitchen floor, beat her to the door, barking. He seemed excited too. Then Lydia pulled the kitchen door open and the kitchen was suddenly filled with large men with booming voices. They shucked off their winter coats and then they were smaller but no less loud—and apparently very pleased with themselves, as Meg had guessed.
Seth gave his mother a quick hug, then crossed the room to Meg, standing by the stove, and gave her a longer, bigger, better hug.
“Everything all right?” she asked. “We heard shots.”
“Nobody got hurt,” Seth told her. “We arrested the three guys at the house, all of them. The gunshots you heard were fired after someone tried to rip off the dealer—that’d be Ed. A buyer, or a competitor, grabbed a wad of cash and made a break for it. Ed blew out one of his tires as he peeled out of the driveway and he hit a tree, but he wasn’t going very fast, so he wasn’t really hurt. If you heard the ambulance, that was more a precaution, in case he was worse off than he looked. Are you okay?”
Meg nodded, waiting for the lump in her throat to clear. “I started cooking. Dinner will be ready sometime.” In a lower voice she asked, “Why is Marcus still here? Didn’t he want to go back to Northampton with his prisoners to bask in glory and thumb his nose at his narcotics colleagues?”
“Yes, and he will, but there’s one piece of unfinished business. Is Justin still here?”
“Yes, in the front room. I think he’s sulking, and he’s been drinking pretty steadily. Why?”
“He’s about to get a surprise.” Seth turned to Marcus. “He’s here. You ready?”
“Definitely,” Marcus replied. He turned and strode into the front parlor, where Justin was sprawled in a shabby armchair. “Justin Campbell,” Marcus began, “I’m arresting you on suspicion of acting as accessory before the fact in inciting the death of Jenn Chambers.”
It took Justin a moment before he could focus his eyes. “What? What’d I do?”
“We have arrested the other occupants of the house up the hill, and one of them gave you up.”
Justin made an effort to stand, but it took a couple of tries. “I didn’t do anything to Jenn. I barely even saw her here in Granford.”
“That may be, but you told Ed Lop
es that she was planning a story about the drug trade.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Mr. Lopes didn’t go into details, but I’m figuring it was because you wanted the story for yourself. You were pretending to be a buyer, but you told him you recognized her from a photo in the paper. With Jenn dead, you could write the article and lead with her heroic efforts and then go on with the story she would have written—only your name would be at the top, right? And the narcotics unit would go along with it, because no doubt you could portray them as heroes.”
“And you’re going to believe a lowlife like Ed Lopes instead of me? I wasn’t even there!”
“He checked out your story and found the picture. We have reason to believe that you met the dealers before Jenn introduced herself into their midst. And you came back once she had wormed her way in to tell them that she was about to blow up their whole business.”
“Why would they believe me?” Justin protested.
“Maybe they didn’t at first, but based on your comments they found out you were right. And then they gave some thought to what to do with her, and she ended up dead. So you, Justin Campbell, were indirectly responsible for getting her killed. That makes you an accomplice to murder. Jenn was careful, and the others might never have known who she really was without your tip.”
“But . . . but . . .” Justin seemed to be at a loss for words. He really thought he’d gotten away with it? Meg wondered. Selfish, stupid young jerk. Thank goodness Marcus had nabbed him.
Marcus was still talking. “It may take a while to sort this mess out, but your pal Ed was pretty clear about how it happened. By the way, he says you still owe him money for your last buy.”
“Do you know who my father is?” Justin demanded.
“No, and I don’t really care, but I’m sure you’ll tell me. In any case, we took the time to alert our scruffy local press, and they’ve taken lots of pictures. They might even share the story with the Globe, since there’s the connection with Jenn.”
“And I think I know the right person to write it,” Meg added with satisfaction: Toby would appreciate the boost, if the editors allowed him to run with the story. She almost felt sorry for Justin, just a bit. He thought he’d had things all worked out, and he’d been undercut by a couple of country cops and some amateurs. That must hurt. She had no idea who his father might be, but Daddy wasn’t going to be very happy with his baby boy tonight.
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