Peeled, Page 3

  A knock on my bedroom door. My cousin Elizabeth came in carrying a yellow smiley-face candle. We’ve lived together for three years, ever since Mom and I moved here after Dad died. Her blond hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. She has a pretty, heart-shaped face.

  “Nan says we have to come down now.” It was Friday night—our family’s big push to get ready for the Saturday farmers market. Elizabeth put the smiley-face candle on my desk.

  “I think the entire Ludlow thing is beyond creepy, Hildy, and I think we should all light candles or something, you know, to dispel the darkness.” She lit the candle; the flame illuminated the happy face. She put a card next to it that read:

  Little candle burning bright

  Bring your light into this night.

  “I’m praying you’ll be okay writing about the ghost,” she said.

  I smiled. “So far it’s working.”

  “I don’t think you realize, Hildy, that Darrell gave you this assignment because he knows you’re the only one who can handle it.” She plopped on my bed, exuding sweetness. It wasn’t fake, either, although I admit, when we first started living together, I didn’t think she was for real. Nan said Elizabeth was like God’s little flower blooming in a land of weeds.

  This begged a question.

  “Am I a weed?” I asked Nan.

  “You’re a flower, too, Hildy.”

  “Which one?” I hoped she wasn’t going to say a snapdragon.

  Nan pointed out the window to her garden, a gift to the neighborhood. “Why, you’re a rose, darlin’. You’ve got a few prickly parts, but they’re nothing compared to the beauty you put out.”

  I could live with that.

  Elizabeth hugged the bed pillow she’d made me that read, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP. “You don’t ever seem afraid, Hildy.”

  That surprised me. “I’m scared lots of times. I guess I don’t like to show it.”

  “I think you’re brave.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  Elizabeth is brave, too, but in less obvious ways. Her mom died when she was a baby, and she and her dad, Felix, are a lot like cheese and chocolate—it’s hard to imagine them blending together. I mentioned this to her once, but Elizabeth found the exception. She made dinner that night—chicken with melted cheese and Mexican mole sauce, a kind of chocolate gravy. Nan, Mom, and I loved it. Uncle Felix had fourths.

  “We’d better get downstairs, Hildy.” Elizabeth headed out the door.

  I didn’t mind working on Friday nights. The “early to bed, early to rise” farming gene missed me completely, but I loved helping with the food that came from our kitchen.

  I watched the smiling candle melt into a fiendish grin.

  Little candle burning hot

  Do we have a ghost or not?

  Huge pots of Nan’s chunky applesauce cooled on the stove; the aroma of cinnamon filled the kitchen. Nan’s applesauce is famous in these parts, and bottling it fresh was a family enterprise.

  My mother opened the box of new applesauce labels she and Elizabeth had created. It had a photo of Nan looking caring and rural.

  Mom, the marketing brains of the family, said grandma, homemade, and country were buzzwords to success. She was cutting blue-checked fabric to put over the jar lids. Mom’s strawberry blond hair was pulled back in a braid, the freckles on her cheeks at their peak as summer was ending. People say I look a lot like her, which is such a compliment.

  “I heard the Hardines might be selling their place dirt cheap,” Nan said. The Hardines lived next door to the Ludlow house.

  “The Schmidts on Red Road are thinking about selling, too,” Mom added. “And I don’t know if the Hortons can make it.”

  That was Lacey’s family. “Not even with a good harvest this year?” I asked.

  “We don’t know what they had to borrow to get through the last two years, Hildy.”

  “And they’re not big enough to do a pick-your-own business,” Felix added. We had forty acres and counted on school groups and the tourist trade to keep going. “If we had to rely on just selling to wholesalers, the way the grocery market’s changed, we’d be on the street.”

  “I’d sell a kidney first,” Nan muttered.

  She always threatened to do that.

  Nan checked the caramel sauce for her apple cake, then took two pans of apple brownies from the oven. The big wooden kitchen table was piled high with apple chutney, apple syrup, apple brown Betty, and apple bread. Juan-Carlos, our best worker, was packing the food into crates. I sipped a glass of Nan’s cider. We Biddles have unfiltered cider flowing in our veins.

  Mom looked up, her eyes sparkling. “Okay, everyone, what’s the underlying reason that people buy apples?” As vice president of the county’s Apple Alliance, she’s always asking the big apple questions.

  “Because they taste good,” Elizabeth offered.

  “Go deeper,” Mom said.

  “They’re good for you,” Elizabeth added. This was true—apples were low in carbs, had no fat, were a major source of fiber—a dieter’s dream because they fill you up.

  “Color,” I mentioned. “Crunch, crispness.”

  Uncle Felix sat at the table, picked a Jonagold apple from a crate, and held it up. His face was tired from working all day, but his eyes shone when he held the fruit. There was something unusually tender in the way he said, “I think it’s because of something we all remember and want to hold on to.”

  Mom smiled and wrote that down. Felix can be a philosopher, depending on his mood. He tried to sneak an apple brownie.

  “I saw that, Daddy.” Elizabeth snatched it from his hand. “You know what the doctor said.”

  The doctor said Felix needed to lose seventy pounds, and never had a man been less committed to the process.

  “Man wasn’t meant to be thin,” he complained. “It’s unhealthy.”

  Nan ladled applesauce into sterilized jars. “I’ll tell you what’s unhealthy—what’s happening over on Farnsworth Road.”

  “Let’s not start in with that,” Felix grumbled.

  Elizabeth beamed. “Hildy’s writing about it.”

  All the adults turned to me.

  “Just a little,” I muttered. My family didn’t think much of the Ludlow legend.

  “She went to the courthouse today,” Elizabeth added.

  “It was during my study hall,” I explained. This news wasn’t going over big.

  Thankfully, the phone rang. Being a teenager, I lunged for it. “Hello?”

  “This is Sheriff Metcalf calling for Felix.”

  “Oh, hi, it’s Hildy.”

  He didn’t respond to that. I handed the phone to Felix. “It’s the sheriff.”

  “Kind of late to be calling,” Nan said.

  It was ten-thirty. I tried to read Felix’s face.

  “Uh-huh…,” he said into the phone.

  All females present listened.

  “Where was he found?” Felix said flatly.

  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.

  Chapter 4

  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:

  MURDER IN BANESVILLE

  LUDLOW HOUSE CLAIMS NEW VICTIM!

  Someone or something is terrorizing Banesville. Early Friday evening, the body of an unidentified man was fou
nd in the grove of apple trees on the Ludlow property. Eyewitnesses said the man had deep scratch marks on his face and hands, prompting frightened neighbors to wonder about the safety of their street. No word has come as yet from the sheriff’s department on the cause of death, but the man’s body was found on the site haunted by the ghost of Clarence Ludlow. Two murders happened there thirty years ago—could a murderous ghost be taking revenge again? Recent investigation by this paper has pointed to increasing signs of ghostly activity at the Ludlow house. As resident groups demand answers, a new warning sign appeared at the Ludlow front door:

  WHO’S NEXT?

  Frightened neighbors say they regularly hear terrifying sobs at night rising in the darkness. Many have even seen ghosts walking the property.

  “Everything here has changed—especially since Sallie Miner was killed,” said one Farnsworth Road resident. “I’m living in a nightmare with no way out.”

  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.”