Peeled (5 page)

Where was who found?

“I see,” Felix said, which told us nothing, but one look at his face said something big was up.

Finally, he hung up and sighed deep.

Nan wiped her hands on her apron, waiting.

Felix said, “The body of a man was found in the grove of apple trees on the Ludlow property a few hours ago. Doesn’t look like he was from around here.”

Elizabeth stood there frozen. “He’s dead?”

Felix nodded. “The sheriff said they’ve secured the area. They’ve got some extra help coming from the state troopers.”

“Was he murdered?” Elizabeth whispered.

“The sheriff’s not saying, but he died somehow.”

“That grove of apple trees is where old man Ludlow died,” Elizabeth said nervously.

“Don’t start with that bunk!” Felix snapped.

Her face got red.

The clock tick-tocked.

MacIntosh, my border collie, trotted up to me and stood guard.

I scratched his thick fur, looked up at the embroidered sign Nan had sewn that hung on our kitchen wall—little green apples spelling out the words
BUY
LOCAL
.

“Did this have anything to do with the attempted break-in?” I asked.

Felix shook his head. “The sheriff didn’t say.”

Nan stood by the window, looking through the sheer
lace curtains at the black sky. “Why did he call?” she asked Felix.

“I expect he’s trying to keep ahead of the rumor mill.”

“I don’t remember the last time we had something like this happen in Banesville,” Nan said.

For the first time I could remember, Felix locked the back door.

Murder
is a big word in a small town.

The Banesville Farmers Market was buzzing with the news.

People picked sweet corn from Bucky Luck’s truck and talked about it.

They drank fresh-squeezed grape juice from The Grapes of Roth farm stand and wondered what it could all mean.

They stopped at Allie’s Applehead Dolls and shook their heads at the darkness of it all.

They lined up at Minska’s Polish Bake Stand and talked about the rumors that were flying.

Heard the body had vampire marks around the neck.

Heard the ghost killed him at the door and then dragged him to the apple grove.

All this talk of murder might not be good for business.
I picked bruised apples from the front bins of our stand and tried to keep the mood light.

Most people want zero emotional trauma when they come to a farmers market. They want fruit without anguish, serious cider, and all the joys of a perfect fall day.

Elizabeth was weighing apples, pouring cider, making change, and hardly saying a word. She gets quiet when she’s scared.

As September days go, it was drop-dead gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky. I looked down the open lane of the Banesville Farmers Market, which took over the circle in the square every Saturday. It was thick with people and produce—peaches, plums, heirloom tomatoes, summer squash, green beans, peppers, and apples of every type and stripe—Braeburns (my dad’s favorite), Crispins, Honeycrisps, Pink Ladys, Jonagolds, Galas. Our customers aren’t looking for Red Delicious. They’d gag at the sight of one. They understand what fruit can be.

My family’s farm stand was smack in the middle of the market, too—the best place to be, according to Felix: “We get ’em coming and going.”

Lev Radner, my second former boyfriend, leaned across the fruit bins. Our families’ stands have been next to each other for years. “There’s a new sign at the Ludlow place,” he told me. “‘The darkness is encroaching.’”

Terrific.

Lev went back to schmoozing with customers in his stand. “My dear madame, into your hand I place an apple,
but do not be deceived—it is so much more than that.” Lev worked hard at being larger than life.

I worked straight through until one o’clock; I’d been up since five.

“Permission to fall apart,” I said to my mother.

“Permission granted.”

I took off my red apron; Elizabeth touched my hand. “Be careful,” she said.

“I’m just taking my lunch break.”

“We
all
need to be careful.”

I walked past Herman’s Upstate Wine kiosk and the apple crepe cart and got in the long line at Minska’s Polish Bake Stand. Minska waved to me.

“You know the last time there was a murder in Banesville?” the woman in front of me said to her friend. “Five years ago, when little Sallie Miner was killed.”

The other woman tsk-tsked.

I wanted to say something about calling that a murder, but I wasn’t sure what.

Sallie Miner was hit by a car. Her death was an accident.

“I heard the body had scratches all over it,” someone else said.

Minska raised her eyebrows at me. Not too much makes her nervous. She grew up in Communist Poland and saw fighting in the streets when she was a girl.

“Keep your head,” Minska said, and put two sausage rolls in a bag for me.

“I’m trying.”

I walked to the little park in town square, sat down on a bench, and ate my sausage rolls.

Tanisha’s little white poodle came running up and jumped in my lap.

“Hey, Pook, how are things in the adorable dog world?”

Pookie wiggled and licked my chin.

“What do you think is happening in town?” I asked her.

Pen Piedmont, the editor and publisher of
The Bee
, walked by with a group of people hanging on his every word.

“We’re committed to keeping the people of Banesville informed,” he told them. “We’ll tell you what we know when we know it. I can promise you that.”

My truth-detection meter hit zero when he said that. When Piedmont bought
The Bee
last year, he promised he was committed to Banesville’s youth. Two months later, he cancelled the high school internship program.

Pookie went ballistic, yipping and snarling until Pen was out of sight.

The harvesters were still working when I got home. They’d spread across the middle grove, picking the Gala apples and the last of the Asian pears. Juan-Carlos was up on a ladder, picking with the lightest touch—reaching, twisting, quickly putting apples in his big shoulder sack.

MacIntosh was running around the trees on canine orchard patrol.

“Big storm coming,” Juan-Carlos said. There still wasn’t a cloud in the sky. He pointed west to the hill where the old Ludlow place stood.

“What do you mean, Juan-Carlos?”

He was quiet for a moment, like he was listening for something. “People are afraid,” he said.

“If you hear anything, will you let me know?”

He smiled. “I listened for your father. I will listen for you.”

I smiled back.
“Buenas noches.”

“
Buenas noches a ti
, my friend.”

I walked through the rows of trees.

Four years ago my dad wrote an exposé for
The Valley News
on how certain farms weren’t providing fair conditions for their seasonal workers. Not everyone was glad when that series came out. A few orchard owners had to pay steep fines, but it made Dad a kind of hero among the harvesters. When he died, so many workers’ came to his funeral. They had candles flickering for Dad at the workers’ quarters on our land.

The Valley News
went out of business, though. Not enough advertising. They used to compete with
The Bee
before Pen Piedmont took over that paper.

I walked up the worn path through the Fuji trees. Apple perfume filled the air, the breeze blew gently, the
leaves swayed. When I was little, I thought the trees were dancing. I used to dance around them, too, with my hands waving in the air.

I snapped an apple off a branch and headed to Nan’s garden. Her roses were still hanging on; her crawling vines of pink trumpet flowers wound around the arbor. I sat on the bench my dad had made out of thick tree branches.

MacIntosh lay down at my feet. I rubbed his head and thought of a day when my dad and I were sitting on this very bench.

“You know how to peel an apple, Hildy?” Dad took out his Swiss Army knife and began to cut away the peel from a fat, juicy apple just picked from one of our trees. I was eight at the time and not too swift with knives.

“Once you start cutting, don’t stop until the peel comes off.” Dad was a speed peeler; in seconds the apple was bare. He handed it to me.

“It’s how you do anything, really,” I remembered Dad saying. “You’ve got to start and not stop until the job is done.”

Mom gave me Dad’s Swiss Army knife after he died. I took the knife out now, opened the blade, held the apple I just picked, and sliced the peel off fast in one piece.

The Bee
hit the street Sunday morning:

The article ended with,
Where is the ghost now? That’s what people want to know.
The Bee
is offering a reward to anyone with information leading to the arrest of the murderer.

I was helping Nan and Mom put out Canadian bacon and apple corn bread for Sunday breakfast.

Uncle Felix threw
The Bee
down.

“He’s exaggerating things!” I said. “Where are the facts about the break-in? Who’s going to believe a ghost is a murderer? How do they know it’s a murder anyway?”

Mom picked up the paper from the floor and read the front page, stern faced.

Elizabeth scrambled eggs at the stove. “Jackie Jowrey told me her aunt was at a party and a hand appeared from nowhere and wrote
Don’t Go to Farnsworth Road
right on the wall!”

Nan raised her eyebrows. “That story has been floating around in different forms for years, honey.”

Elizabeth sprinkled fresh dill in the eggs. “I’m just repeating what I heard!”

“Just because you hear something doesn’t mean it’s right,” Felix warned.

“Then how do you know what’s true?” Elizabeth put the eggs on a platter.

“It’s like looking at an apple,” Felix explained. “It’s not about color, it’s about what it’s got inside.”

Nan scooped scrambled egg whites onto Felix’s plate, no corn bread. She’d put him officially on the Last Chance Diet.

“They’re not a natural color,” Felix complained.

“It’s not about color, it’s about what it’s got inside.” Nan was his mother and could get away with this.

Felix bowed his head. “Lord, for
some
of what we are about to receive, let us be truly grateful.”

Monday Morning
Core
staff meeting. Room 67B.

On the table—Tanisha’s recent pictures of life in Banesville. She was doing a town retrospective. She really could capture moments.

Puppies playing in the window of Pet People while kids watched and laughed.

A girl with a candied apple stuck in her hair.

A guy with vampire teeth in front of the old Ludlow place.

Darrell stood before us. “We have a big opportunity to get people to finally pay attention to the paper. Hildy, I need your copy ASAP on the Ludlow house stuff, including all the details about the dead body.”

“I don’t have any details on that, Darrell.”