Rotten to the Core Read Online Free Page B

chances.

4

    Meg turned on all the lights downstairs. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the ghost of that poor man haunting her. After all, he’d been dead for a day or two without stopping by to bother her. And she refused to give in to an irrational fear of being alone. Still, she was new to living in the country, accustomed instead to city sounds—cars, horns, fire and police sirens. In Boston it was never really totally quiet. Here in Granford the silence was sometimes unnerving—although now, she realized, there was a new element: the peepers in the adjacent wetlands had awakened with the warmer weather and provided a shrill chorus. As for the “alone” part, she was used to that, although Briona’s arrival would change that to some extent.
    The sound of a vehicle entering her still-unpaved driveway interrupted her increasingly gloomy thoughts, and when she looked out the dining room window she was absurdly pleased to see Seth’s sister Rachel climbing out of her van with a basket that looked heavy. Rachel seldom arrived without food, and Meg realized she was hungry. Rachel saw her watching and pointed toward the back door. Meg hurried to the kitchen to let her in.
    Rachel entered the kitchen, dropped the basket on the floor, and flung her arms around Meg. “You poor baby. Seth told me about the body. Are you all right?”
    “I think so. You didn’t need to come all the way over here just to check on me.”
    Rachel finally released Meg. “Of course I did. I couldn’t stand the idea of you moping around here all by yourself. And I’ll bet you haven’t eaten anything. Right?”
    “Guilty. But I was going to do something about that shortly. You didn’t have to—”
    Rachel cut her off. “Shut up. That’s what friends do around here. Besides, the kids were arguing over homework, so I let Noah take over. And this is stuff I had made and stuck in the freezer for an occasion just like this. Point me to your microwave.”
    “You stockpile food for murders?” Meg asked.
    “You know what I mean.” Rachel unwrapped a casserole dish and pushed it into the microwave, studied the controls for a few seconds, then punched some buttons. “There. Now we’ve got a few minutes. And you look like you could use a drink. You have wine?”
    “In the fridge,” Meg replied. “You don’t need to . . .”
    Too late. Rachel had already found glasses, extricated the bottle from the refrigerator, and set them all on the table. “I’ll have one, and only one, since I’m driving. But you go right ahead. Sit!”
    Meg sat. Rachel threw herself into a chair across from her. “Okay, what’s the story?”
    Meg poured herself a glass of wine and sipped. It did taste good. She felt her shoulders loosening. “I went up to take a look around the orchard this afternoon, and there was a dead guy stuffed in the springhouse.”
    “So he just wandered into your orchard and decided to drop dead?”
    Meg shrugged. “I don’t know anything different. I’m in and out all the time, with errands and stuff, and, no, I didn’t notice any weirdness going on in my orchard. Is there any religion that makes sacrifices at the spring equinox?”
    Rachel smiled. “I don’t know of any, but nothing would surprise me in this area. You have no idea what some folks get into. You have a name for him?”
    “His ID said Jason Miller.”
    “Jason Miller, Jason Miller . . . why does that sound familiar?” The microwave beeped, and Rachel bounced out of her chair, rotated the dish inside, then started it again. She leaned against the counter to face Meg. “Ah! Got it. He’s the front man for GreenGrow.”
    “GreenGrow?”
    “A group of organic farming zealots in Amherst. They seem to do a lot of protesting of one thing or another. Jason got the most face time. You haven’t heard of them?”
    “I don’t think so, but I haven’t been around here that long. I wonder why he was here in my orchard.”
    The microwave beeped again, and Rachel