Poison Apples (26 page)

He looked down and then up at her, as though surprised to see her, as though he hadn’t known she was coming. “Hi,” he said, and when she didn’t answer, he said, “Okay, you saw us. It was no rendezvous, nothing planned, I’ll tell you that. That girl has been after me since the day she arrived. She’s a mixed-up kid. Needed someone to talk to, couldn’t talk to the relatives. Had an abortion just before she came, she tell you that?”

“No,” Emily said, sucking in her breath.

“It threw her, you know, the guy just split. She’s lonely, feels guilty. Said her mother would kill her if she knew. I had to listen, that’s all.” He wrapped his arms around his knees, stared at the stone underneath, as though it would give him more words to use.

“You said it was unplanned? It sounds like you’ve had a lot of conversations.” She heard her voice harsh; she might be coming down with a cold.

“Last night? Yeah. I just went down to play, that’s all. I didn’t know the Butterfields were out, they must have decided at the last minute. She came down, in that nightgown. I was about to throw her out when you arrived. That’s all, Em.” She heard him swallow, then cough. “And now. You can explain a few things, too.” He stood up, confronted her. She took a step backward. His eyes lit into hers like lasers. She waited.

“You were in the bunkhouse. Well, okay, but you were going through
my
things. My mail. I don’t care for that, Emily.”

“I didn’t read anything.” She trembled with the lie.

“Oh yes, you did. That letter on the pink stationery was from an old girlfriend of mine. I could tell the way it was crumpled— you didn’t even put it back in the envelope! We broke up at home. It was before I came up here, but she holds on, one more needy kid. I haven’t written her in weeks, you read that!”

“Home? She was from Waterbury, Connecticut. You said you were from Massachusetts.” She was on the offensive now. It was time to attack. He was the one in the wrong, not her! “Why did you fib? What was the point?”

He shrugged. “The Earthrowls are from Waterbury. I didn’t want any ‘Do you know the Pupplebuddies?’—that sort of thing. I never met the bloody Earthrowls down there. Never laid eyes on them! Besides, I really am from Massachusetts. I mean, more or less. I have a P.O. box in Cambridge. My dad still lives in Waterbury. I suppose you saw that letter, too.”

“I didn’t read it.”

“My stepmother moved to California after the divorce. Dad hangs on, his business. Look, Em, I’m sorry about last night. But that girl, Opal—she’s like a mosquito you swat, and she whips away, and then flies back at you.”

He was standing in front of her now, arms limp at his sides, eyes downcast, like a small boy sorry he’d filched the cookies in your lunch box. She had to laugh. He laughed with her then, took her in his arms. “Valley Fair tomorrow, right? Couple of good bands playing—derelicts, but still got spunk. Lynyrd Skynyrd: They’ve got a triple guitar front, you’ll love them, Em. Steppenwolf, too. I’ve got a room for us, friend of mine has a pad. He’s gone, won’t be back till Sunday noon.”

She couldn’t speak, filled with the thought of tomorrow.

“We’ll be back to pick Sunday afternoon. Might not make it up to Montreal—the Volvo needs a part—I can’t get it fixed till Monday.” He looked into her eyes. She felt the red crawl up her neck, flood her cheeks. She still didn’t know about the overnight. What
would
she tell her mother? Then she was angry at her mother for treating her like a child. When she was almost eighteen. Eighteen!

“Okay, Em? That Opal, she’s a cruiser. That kind’s not for me. I like open, earthy girls—like you, Em.” He smiled at her, and though she knew he was loading it on her, she gave in, let him kiss her. But a moment later they heard Rufus’s voice, the sound of Jamaicans, their chatter, two of them singing a high-pitched gospel tune. She caught the phrase: “... a balm in Gil-e-ad-d .. .” They’d be picking up the last of the crates. Adam grabbed her wrist, hard. “Okay, then, Em, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, feeling giddy, and swerved about, ran crazy-legged back down the path, ducking between trees to avoid Derek and the blue-eyed Zayon, who were juggling an enormous crate between them. They smiled at her.

It was like she was running down a mountain toward a cliff:

Any minute she’d leap off—and into what? She stopped running a moment, clasped a tree trunk. It was an old maple tree, not an apple. It felt solid, stable; she pressed her face into it, heard her breath come in raggedy gasps. Tomorrow ….

Chapter Fifty-four

Turnbull—no, Chris Christ, though Colm couldn’t think of him by that name, doubted even that was the real one—lived in a condominium, one of the more expensive ones in town, near the college. The place had old-fashioned-looking gas lamps along a curving drive. A marble walk lined with orange and yellow chrysanthemums led to the door of Number 3.
REVEREND
MICHAEL
TURNBULL
, an aluminum door plaque announced.

Colm knocked: a shiny brass knocker. His heart lurched a little: He didn’t know why he should be nervous, but he was. He’d called ahead; the man had hesitated a long time before granting the interview. Colm had tried to sound laid-back, like it wasn’t so important to speak to the guy. But Turnbull knew. “You’re the one who’s been talking to my women,” he’d said, like he was king of the concubines—Colm had to smile, thinking of Bertha. Finally Turnbull said, “I’m a busy man, I have charities, I have prayer sessions.” He had “important agenda”—as though a homicide (Cassandra) and an orchard under siege were of little import.

The man took his sweet time opening up. An eye squinted through an oblong slit in the door. When it finally opened, Colm saw a large rectangular living room furnished with black leather sofa and chairs, gold-framed biblical paintings, including one of the female with a tray of apples he’d seen in Bertha’s house. Only this one was an oil, not a print. It looked expensive. Where had he gotten the money for it? Turnbull gave a fleeting smile through perfect white teeth. He was dressed in black: black gabardine pants, carefully creased; white shirt with a striped blue and black regimental tie; black jacket. Colm could see the belly where it pouched over the belted pants. He sucked in his own.

Turnbull was a little breathless, he had things to do, places to go. He kept glancing at his large black leather watch. He wore a diamond ring on his pinkie. Colm sat down in one of the black chairs—was suddenly tipped back. How to sabotage your interrogator. He thought he heard Turnbull snicker. “I’m afraid you pushed a button with your hand.” The man creaked back on the leather sofa, he had the upper hand. Colm struggled with the switch, finally popped it; the chair swooshed up, almost hurling him onto the white carpet.

A white carpet, Colm thought, as though Turnbull never came in with dirt on his shoes. He thought of Ruth, stomping in from the barn in her “milking” boots; she’d make short work of this white carpet! Turnbull glanced at his watch again. “I have an appointment at ten,” he said pointedly. He didn’t say where, with whom. He gave an artificial smile. He was a handsome fellow—in his early fifties, maybe, hard to tell. He would charm the women, of course.

Colm was aware of his own open shirt. He’d dressed in a hurry that morning: had on kelly green cords with a royal blue shirt. His socks weren’t the same length—jeez. Why was he nervous? Who was he dealing with here? His feet found the carpet, he sat sunk in the chair. “I understand Turnbull is not your real name,” he said, hearing his voice coming from the root of the seat.

There was a moment of silence. He half expected the man to intone a prayer. “Where did you hear that?” said Turnbull. Or Chris Christ.

Colm shrugged. “One of your, um, parishioners. She said your real name is Chris—Christopher?—Christ. Why did you change it?”

Chris Christ (if that was the real name) looked down modestly, straightened his tie. The chin dropped into two folds. He didn’t look so handsome now; he might have been any gray-haired minister with a parish. But the eyes, when they stared into Colm’s, were cold; the pupils were like brown hard-shelled eggs. “I decided to take my stepfather’s name,” he said. And that answered that.

The rest of the questions he answered exactly, briefly, no elaboration. He had a deep, fall-bodied voice, a slight accent Colm couldn’t place—it wasn’t New York, it didn’t sound New England. His breath came in short gasps between answers. Colm could imagine him in a responsive reading:
Takes my breath away,
a parishioner would say. He was from Iowa originally, he said;

came east to Bible college, heard the calling. He founded the Messengers of Saint Dorothea, “oh, four years ago now.” He’d sensed a “spiritual need” here in Branbury, one the other churches couldn’t fulfill. No, it wasn’t affiliated with any other church, it was his own. It was a Christian church, yes, of course! He tithed, ah yes, one had to—twelve percent. Some pledged more of their income, of their own volition. The church was small but growing. Mostly women? Colm asked.

“Well, perhaps. Although we’ve a few men. Most men don’t attend any church, do they? Too bad. They fall by the wayside, like that teacher, that Aaron Samuels. Jewish, of course, but had the synagogue if he wanted, didn’t he?” When he said “synagogue,” Colm thought, it sounded like “cw-a-gogue.” As for Unitarians—well, they weren’t a “church,” were they?

But here was a nice lead-in to the real subject: Cassandra. Colm understood that “there was an, um, misunderstanding between Cassandra and, um, yourself.”

This time he’d put Turnbull (couldn’t call him Christ) off balance. A few fine drops of sweat sprang up on the man’s forehead. The black wing tips did a soft shuffle on the white carpet. He almost spit out the words. “There was no
serious
misunderstanding. And I can’t see where that would concern you.” The eyes shot bullets at Colm.

“It does where a homicide is concerned.” Colm was relaxing now, he rose up a little in his seat. If he’d had a badge, he would have flashed it—he wasn’t exactly a full-time cop. But it only took a phone call to Fallon. He’d already explained that to the man when he set up the interview.

Turnbull sighed, and gave in. “It’s nothing, really. Cassandra is—was—a relative, second cousin on my mother’s side. She’s one of the reasons I came to Branbury; she made over her barn for our church, helped bring in members. Cassandra is—was—a go-getter. She was the church treasurer, had been an accountant in her professional life. But I found the books weren’t exactly .. .”

“Robbing the till?” Colm suggested. He was enjoying himself now. It was like being in a play, he supposed, like the one play he’d got dragged into acting in by Bertha back in high school: nervous as hell at the start, hands shaking; then by the third act having the time of his life. He’d actually tried out for another show, got turned down—fortunately. He had a hard time memorizing lines, to tell the truth.

“Borrowing a little. She called it that, she’d put capital into the church, improvements; she thought she was entitled to take it out. I’m sure she’d have paid it back. We had a few words, I made her understand. But then—that madman, things happening so fast, that Earthrowl, running at her ...” He was waxing eloquent now: the melodious voice, the evangelist’s quaver, gazing at the white ceiling as though a pair of angels would suddenly descend. “Ye have plowed wickedness, Earthrowl,” he intoned. “Ye have reaped iniquity.”

“The stories differ,” Colm said. “There’s no hard evidence. Nothing to indicate that Earthrowl even hit her. He thinks he bumped a curb in the Graniteworks; that would account for the adhesion in a front tire, a scratch on the bumper. There was nothing to indicate he’d struck a person—no hairs, no fibers.”

The interview disintegrated then, Turnbull rising up, a meeting he couldn’t miss; if he could be of more help, why, then .. . Oily, sure of himself, the white carpet with its black leather furnishings a metaphor for the man’s mind. Black and white, nothing in between. Colm had picked up some church literature at Bertha’s: anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-black—skin, that is, not furniture. All neatly tied up with quotes from the Bible. He supposed it gave the outsiders a sense of belonging to a group; all the anti’s made them feel positive about themselves.

On the way out he met a young postwoman, putting the mail in the porch box. When she left, after a surprised “Hello, there, Mr. Hanna,” he riffled through quickly. Bills, bank statements— he appropriated one from a Boston bank—he’d steam it open, get it back in the mail—who would know? A neighbor, getting the wrong mail. There was a letter from a lawyer; he kept that, too, stuck them inside his jacket. Jeez, a lime-green jacket, he was a vision in Technicolor—Ruth would laugh. He’d steam the letters at her house. He was in the mood for a doughnut. Coffee. The good smells of her farm kitchen. Anyway, he had something else on his mind. He wanted her to go to the Valley Fair with him Saturday—after milking, of course. Take in the sights, eat some of that cotton candy. Go necking, maybe, on one of the whirly wheels. She’d scream, cling to him, and—

“Jeez,” he moaned. “Oh, jeez.”

Chapter Fifty-five

Emily was enthralled with the fair. She’d been summers to the local Field Days but never to the big statewide fair. There’d always been so much to do at home, in the barn, in the fields. Now, with Adam at her side, looking gorgeous with his blond hair tied back with a black grosgrain ribbon, the black
STEPPENWOLF
T-shirt he’d bought at a stall and slipped on over his red-tailed hawk T-shirt, the tight black jeans and Birkenstock sandals—oh, it was heaven. Simply heaven. And oh, the sounds and smells and colors! The cotton candy that was spreading now, like thick pink moss, over Adam’s chin, the odor of popcorn, fried chicken, even the familiar animal dung. The neon dazzle of the rides, the voices hawking games: “Three shots for a dollar—pick out your stuffed animal!” Adam won an enormous furry Pooh bear by tossing a quarter into a plate in the center of a tent; she couldn’t do it, her quarter bounced out each time. “You’re the only one did it this afternoon,” the vendor told Adam, and she glowed in his small triumph, was thrilled when he presented it to her with a mock bow.