Poison Apples Read Online Free

volunteer:
    church, hospital, library, orchard. She was glad of Don’s calming presence: A third person might hold back an explosion.
    “A little accident,” she said, “over in the west quad. No, maybe more than an accident.” She had to admit it. “A pair of trees, cut down. Mature trees, someone might have thought them ready to go. Rufus had been marking the old ones. I don’t know the variety.” She held out the drops.
    “William Crump,” Don said. “It’s a dessert apple, crisp and juicy. You don’t see it around here very often. I’ve a couple trees of it myself.”
    Stan was staring at her. He was unusually quiet. Suddenly he threw up an arm and Don raced over to catch him from falling. Moira rushed a stool under him. Stan’s face was as patchy red as the apple skins.
    “It’s been a shock, these . .. accidents,” she told Don, and he nodded, he knew.
    Stan came slowly to life then. “Accidents, hell,” he muttered. “Malice. That’s the word you want. Malice. Someone wanting to do me in. That woman on the school board. Cassandra Wickham.”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Stan. Just because she holds a different opinion from you.”
    It was the wrong thing to say. Stan staggered up, knocking the stool sideways against the barn wall. Before she could open her mouth to warn him back, he was striding off into the orchard, into the west quad, toward the debris. She prayed the young people would have cleaned it up by now. She heard him shout, “Rufus!”
    Don grabbed her elbow, held her back. “Let him go,” he said. “He’ll have to see it sooner or later.”
    “You saw it?”
    “No, Zayon told me—I was on my way here. It wasn’t one of the marked trees, he said. It was still yielding.” Don looked worried. “Stan should see a doctor. He doesn’t look good. Anyone check his blood pressure lately?”
    “It was high when we came here. You knew about our daughter.” Don nodded; everyone knew. “He was just beginning to heal when that spraying accident...” She looked at her neighbor. “If it was an accident...”
    Don was silent a minute. “I hope it was. I hope to God it was.”
     

Chapter Five
     
    Emily Willmarth’s mother was already at the door when Moira got back. Ruth was a tall, robust-looking woman . .. well, robust, yes, but lithe, dressed in loose-fitting jeans, a yellow denim shirt open at the neck, brown leather boots redolent of barn. She was most likely in her mid-to-late-forties. She lived on a hardscrabble farm on the road behind the orchard—they’d met off and on at the local food co-op. Ruth was divorced, Moira knew, with two children still in the house, if you could call Emily a child. She must be at least seventeen, maybe eighteen. The girl’s breasts were bursting out of her denim shirt as she ran up behind her mother to collect a packet of sandwiches Ruth had brought.
    “I have to go now, Mom. I haven’t got to the picking yet, we had a little .. . accident. I’m helping to clean up.”
    “Uh-oh.” Ruth smiled. “I hope it wasn’t anything you were involved in.”
    Emily glanced at Moira. “Most definitely not,” she said, and raced off, her denim shirttail flapping behind her.
    “Someone cut down a couple of our trees,” Moira told Ruth. She paused, coughed, she hardly knew this woman. Then, seeing Ruth’s interest, her concern, she went on. She recalled something Don Yates had told her about Ruth’s help with other victims—an abused woman, an elderly farmer and his wife, that eccentric old Glenna Flint on Cow Hill Road, who’d been kidnapped but, remarkably, survived.
    “Come on in,” she said. “Emily left your cider in the kitchen. Have a cup of coffee with me. I need to talk to someone. Can you spare the time? I know you have all those cows.”
    “I have a good hired man. He can cope for a bit.” Ruth had a nice smile, it lit up her face. “I live on caffeine. One day it will do me in. But for now—it’s fuel, energy, a way of