Poison Apples (34 page)

“Montreal,” he said. “You got your suitcase?”

“You know I don’t!” she cried. “You can’t just leave Rufus. Go back, Adam! Why did you do that? Why, Adam?” She was speaking of Rufus, but he was talking about something else as he drove: fast, so fast she found herself clinging to the door handle. She couldn’t look at the speedometer. Mechanically, she reached for a seatbelt, but couldn’t find it. They raced past the sharp bend where West Street cut in, the old cemetery on the right where her dad’s parents were buried; on up to Addison 4-Corners, careening on three wheels, so it seemed, around the curve and out toward the lake, past farms and orchards and falling-down barns.

“Earthrowl,” he was saying, “he’s the one killed my brother. He’s the real murderer. Hounding, hounding Trevor months, years after the accident, letters, phone calls, lawsuit—you wouldn’t believe the harassment—long after they moved up here. Till Trevor—he couldn’t take it, he—”

Adam coughed, and coughed; mechanically she rubbed his back. The trees were racing past the window, the world was a greenish-blue blur, she could only look at Adam, there was blood on the steering wheel. Blood on the bunkhouse floor where Rufus was lying . .. “Adam, go back, we have to go back.”

But Adam was talking again, entreating her, trying to make her understand something. “I had to show him, he couldn’t do that to Trevor. He had to be punished. It was killing me that he got away with it. Finally I saw how. Saw in the paper about someone spraying Roundup—a friend sent it on, said it might’ve been an accident. I knew then—knew I’d finish the job. I knew how to pick apples. I had a different last name, he never caught on why I was here....”

She sat frozen to her seat, her hand numb on the door handle. The late sun was in her eyes, the clouds shone like the bright headlights of cars, she was dazed with it. Rufus was right, she thought, and Opal, too: It was Adam all the time.

“All those bad things, Adam: the paraquat, the maggots, those disgusting worms . .. the Roundup spraying last spring?”

“Someone else did the Roundup, I said. Are you listening to me?”

“The paraquat, though. Poisoning the apples. And Bartholomew died, Adam, he died because of what you did. Adam, how could you?”

But Adam was there behind the wheel, nodding, nodding, not smiling, not looking triumphant or anything, just nodding, like it was out of his hands, like he was the instrument of some outer force he had no control over.

“Not the cows, though, Adam, not my mother’s cows . .. Say you didn’t do that!” But he was humped over the wheel, like he was glued to it, his foot solidly down on the accelerator.

“Adam, stop, stop the car, Adam! I want to get out. I want us to go back. Turn back, Adam, turn back.” A sign flashed by: Route 125, they were still on it, it was twisting and turning toward Lake Champlain. The Crown Point Bridge loomed up suddenly through the trees, its steel girders glazed with sun. The lake was a blue blade, knifing northward. “Adam, stop,” she screamed. “Let me out!” But he was racing toward the bridge.

Chapter Sixty-eight

The barn phone rang and Sharon ran back to pick it up, leaving Ruth with the sick bull calf and her grandson Robbie asking, “Why it won’t get up, Nana?” The calf was having convulsions. Doc Greiner was finally on his way. “It’s all right, it’ll be all right,” Ruth told Oprah, knowing it might not be, Oprah would lose the calf no matter what. She imagined her own son destined for slaughter—she shuddered. But it happened in wars, didn’t it? What a mad world.

Sharon was standing over her, repeating her name. “Mother! Mother, you’d better talk to Moira. She’s sounding hysterical. Something bad ...”

Things exploded in her head then, everyone wanting her, needing her: Moira’s panic on the phone—something about Rufus, an ambulance. Doc Greiner arriving and Oprah butting him, the vet giving a yell, an oath. “She won’t let me near the calf. Get her away, Ruth!” Sharon shouting at the toddler to move: “Robbie, out of the barn, you hear me? Mom, my sitter has to leave. The baby—”

To Moira: “I’ll be over in a minute, soon as I can.” To Sharon, who was pushing the boy out the barn door: “Help me with Oprah. She doesn’t want to move. Let’s get her in the stanchion. So Doc Greiner...”

The doctor, a graying, robust man, overworked but cheerful, his shirt daubed with excrement from the convulsing calf, was poking a needle into the animal’s flesh. “It doesn’t look good,” he said, “not good, but we’ll give it the best try.”

“I have to get the sitter,” Sharon shouted, “then I’ll come back. Vic’s home,” she added, squinting out the door. “Tell him to clean up this mess, put down more hay. That calf has wrecked the place.”

Ruth was torn, between calf and orchard. Then realized: Rufus. It was Rufus who was hurt. What had Moira said? Bleeding! She recalled that word now. Rufus, on his way to accuse Adam of something. Of poisoning those apples? And where was Adam? Had he done something to Rufus?

“Doc,” she said, “can you hold the fort? I’ll get Tim, he’ll be in to milk in a couple minutes anyway. Vic’s here to help. Sharon’ll be back. Maybe Emily.” Emily? Where was Emily? What had she seen? Good God. Ruth remembered. Emily was on her way to the bunkhouse. “Get Tim, tell him to get to the barn, on the double,” she screamed at Vic, who was running up the steps into the house, schoolbooks banging on his back.

“Mom, I have to pee.”

“Get Tim, I said, he’s in the east pasture, and pee on the way.”

“Jezum.” The boy veered off in the direction of the east pasture, unzipping as he ran.

* * * *

The ambulance was shrieking off as Ruth arrived; she wondered if Colm was in it, on call. But the doors were shut tight, she could see only the shapes of two medics, leaning over what must be Rufus. Was he hurt bad? Was he alive? So many   questions .. .

Then Moira was on her, shouting in her ear. “Knifed, unconscious. I don’t know the medic, it wasn’t your Colm Hanna.” Moira looked like a madwoman, her hair wild in the wind, she was hissing out the words. “I haven’t said anything to Stan, I don’t want him to know. Not yet.”

“Who did it? Who hurt Rufus?”

“We don’t know who, but it was in the bunkhouse where Adam Golding lives. The twins found Rufus. Adam’s gone. What other conclusion can I come to?” She stroked back a mass of snarled hair; there was blood on her hands. She held them out, looked at them blankly, as if they were a stranger’s gloves she’d pulled on by mistake. “The police are in the bunkhouse now. They seemed upset we’d moved him, but my God, we had to get help!”

“Emily,” Ruth said. “Have you seen Emily?”

And Moira looked at her blankly.

Chapter Sixty-nine

Colm was at the mortuary, trying to get through to Ruth, to tell her they had Wickham, alias Turnbull, alias Chris Christ; he was pleased with the litany of names he recited in his head. They’d caught up with Wickham in Malone, New York, at a Burger King—a nurse from the Planned Parenthood clinic had spotted him, phoned the police. He was wanted in that town, too, for disrupting the flow of traffic into a clinic, knocking down a male nurse, giving him a concussion. They were investigating other complaints: a clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, another in Buffalo, a wounded doctor in Canada—the list was long. At Colm’s request they’d impounded the man’s Blazer—they found it at the local Chevrolet dealer’s with a busted alternator; Wickham had taken off in a blue Beetle with Vermont plates. They’d brought him back to Branbury.

First the line was busy, then Vic answered. “We’ve got a sick calf here, I’m helping the vet.”

“But where’s your mother? I have some news she’ll want to hear.. .. Vic, you still there?”

“Yeah, the vet needs me, I gotta help hold the calf down.”

“Your mother, Vic! She’s not there?”

“She’s gone to the orchard.” And the phone went dead.

Immediately it rang again. It was Bertha. “Colm, he took my car. My little blue Beetle! He said he’d be back, but that was last night, Colm! He won’t answer his phone. I have a grange meeting tonight. Can you take me?”

“Sorry, Bertha, I’ve got an appointment. I mean, right now. Can you ask one of your friends?”

“But I thought you could pick me up after. I’m done by eight-thirty. We could go have a coffee somewhere. I could tell you things about him, Colm. Things you might want to know.”

Colm considered. “I’ll pick you up, then, Bertha. After. I can’t before. You can take a taxi.”

“All right, then, Colm.” She sounded triumphant. She had the trump card—or was it blackmail? “Nine o’clock, at the grange hall. I’ll be waiting, Colm.”

“Sure, Bertha.” He hung up. It had better be good. He didn’t want to hear about the time Wickham-alias-alias had stepped on her feelings.

He pulled on his coat and the phone rang again. This time it was Roy Fallon. He was talking about a Rufus. Colm did a double-take, yanked back his shoulders. “What was the name again, Roy?”

“Rufus. Rufus Barrow, that orchard manager. Thought you’d want to know. He got hurt. They got him in intensive care.”

Those high ladders they climbed on to pick the apples .. . Colm could never be a picker, he was scared of heights. Jeez.

Fallon said, “A knife wound, a jagged pruning knife, in the throat. We have it now, we’re checking fingerprints. An impulse stabbing, I’d say—in the bunkhouse—or the guy wouldn’t have left it behind like that. That is, I assume it was a guy.”

“Jesus Maria.” Colm felt his legs go numb, the receiver stuck to his ear. That’s why Ruth was there. What about Emily? The place would be in pandemonium. “Thanks, Roy. I’m on my way.”

Chapter Seventy

Emily wasn’t in the apple barn. She wasn’t by the pond, she didn’t answer to Ruth’s shouts. Derek had seen her, he said, spoken to her “just. .. short time ago. Bad ting, bad ting going on here,” he kept repeating.

“Then what, Derek? Where did she go?” Ruth demanded, out of breath from running, out of voice, feeling her skin on fire; and he pointed down the path that led to the second bunkhouse. Her breath quit, she heard herself gasping. Moira grabbed her elbow, to steady her. “It doesn’t mean—not necessarily that—”

But Ruth was already past the crime scene tape, forcing her way into the bunkhouse, struggling with the detective who was holding her back. “Lady, lady, you can’t go in there.”

Ruth couldn’t speak, couldn’t explain; it was Moira who had to do the talking. “Her daughter was with that boy, that Adam, the one who we think might—might have .. . attacked Rufus. We don’t know why.”

“Oh, we do, we do know why.” Ruth had found her breath. “It was because—because of something Opal told him, or wrote him, accusing Adam of doing all—all that’s been going on....” She swept her arms wide to encompass the orchard.

“No! Opal?” said Moira. “I felt when she first arrived she meant trouble. It’s what that bird was trying to tell us. But we didn’t listen....”

“Bird?” said the officer, raising an eyebrow. He stood firm, a solid wall. The women couldn’t go in. Not until the men inside had every print, every fiber, every possible clue to what had happened. He was trying to be patient, he had a daughter himself, he understood. “Please,” he said, the final rejection.

Ruth gave a shout. She saw something caught in a bush at the far corner of the bunkhouse. Something bright green with red stripes, unmistakable. It was Emily’s bandanna, the one she wore for picking. It had been a present from Wilder Unsworth, her high school boyfriend. She treasured it, even though they weren’t seeing each other very often. She snatched it up, waved it at the officer’s face. “It’s my daughter’s, it’s Emily’s. She was pulled this way, toward his car. She would have picked it up if she’d had time, she’s a careful person.”

“He kept his car here,” Moira said. “Adam and the Butterfields. But.. .”

The parking space was empty. “He’s got her,” Ruth cried, “he’s got her in his car—against her will, oh, I know it, she’d never leave that bandanna behind.”

Colm was suddenly beside her, running ahead, shouting back, “He peeled off, all right, you can see the tire marks in the grass. They went out that way.” He pointed to a grassy road.

“It’s a tractor road,” Moira explained. “It winds through the orchard and exits on Route 125.”

“Why haven’t you gone after him?” Ruth accused the officer. “After his Volvo? This all happened—how long ago—a half hour, at least? Longer? They could be in New York State by now, over the bridge, headed toward Montreal, Albany, California—I don’t know! He knifed a man, he could do it again. To save his hide.”

Ruth was out of control now, she knew it, the blood was boiling in her head, her knees, her toes. This was her daughter, Emily, he’d taken. She wanted to grab the officer, stamp out his confounded patience.

Colm patted her arm. “All right, all right, Ruthie.”

But the officer was motioning her down, the way you’d tell a dog to lie down, stop barking. “Ma’am, the call’s out, Vermont and New York. They know about the Volvo. One of the young men told us. They’ll find him. Calm down, now.”

“I can’t just stand here, I can’t just wait,” Ruth told Colm, and, against his protests, ran back toward her pickup. A policeman swore softly as she rammed past; her boots squashed a fallen apple. She glanced at the farmhouse as she ran and saw Opal’s white face pressed against the window. Was the girl satisfied now with her mischief? She picked up an apple, threw it at the image. It missed and hit the porch rocker.

Now it was Colm who was in the way, he was pushing her toward the passenger seat. “I’ll drive,” he said, “I don’t want you running me into the lake.”

“The lake,” she hollered. “We’ll follow 125, head for the lake. For the bridge. He might’ve killed a man, he knew it, he’ll be half crazed, want to get out of the state. I feel that way myself. He’ll be driving fast. Too fast.”

“Get in,” Colm ordered, holding open the dented door. She obeyed, and they were off, heading past the bunkhouse again, past the angry geese, their wings wide and flapping, down the rutted tractor road toward Route 125. A flock of starlings flew up in the air like black leaves. Already it was dusk. An apple bounced off the top of the car; its juice splattered on the windshield. She stared ahead mutely, while the apple world spun by.