A Killer Crop Read Free Page B

Meg.
    “When and where was that?”
    “As I said, I arrived in the early afternoon on Saturday. Daniel and I shared a late lunch in Amherst.”
    “Was your husband with you, Mrs. Corey?”
    “No, Phillip is currently traveling with some friends. I’m not exactly sure how you could reach him—I believe he’s on a boat, although perhaps one of his friends has a cell phone with him. But the point of his trip was to get away from such things, so it may not be turned on.”
    “We’ll come back to that. You say you had lunch with Mr. Weston on Saturday. Then what?”
    “He showed me the Amherst campus, where he teaches. We drove around a bit after that. This is what the locals consider prime leaf-viewing season, isn’t it? The roads were rather crowded, I thought.”
    “Yes, there are quite a few tourists around. Where did you go after you went driving?”
    “He drove me back to Northampton—I was staying at that lovely hotel in the center of town. We made plans to meet the next morning.”
    “You didn’t have dinner with him?”
    “No. He said he had a prior engagement, and in any case I was tired from the drive. I ate at the hotel, and went to bed early.”
    “Did you see him after that?”
    “Yes. He picked me up Sunday morning and we had a late brunch. Then he said he had to prepare for something—a class or a college event, he didn’t elaborate—and then he left. We came together again for dinner that night. He saw me back to my hotel afterward, and then he left. He had said he would call yesterday morning, Monday, but I never heard from him. Oh, God,” she whispered. “Was he dead by then?”
    Meg remained silent, but she was doing the math. What had her mother been doing all day yesterday, before she had appeared at the house? “When exactly did this Daniel Weston die, Detective?”
    Marcus seemed startled by Meg’s interruption. “His body was discovered yesterday morning, and he’d been dead a few hours. He died late Sunday night. What time did you finish dinner, Mrs. Corey?”
    “I’d say around nine.”
    “Did he mention any other plans for the evening?”
    Elizabeth shook her head. “No. I assumed he was going home.”
    “Do you know his wife?”
    “Patricia? No, we’ve never met. I knew his first wife slightly.”
    “How would you characterize your relationship with Mr. Weston?”
    “He and I were old friends. As was my husband.”
    “Had you seen him since your grad school days?”
    “Actually, no—or at least not for many years. We exchanged holiday cards, but I had little occasion to come up this way. I was quite surprised when I heard from him.”
    One of Marcus’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. “He contacted you?”
    “Yes, he did, last week. He said he was curious about how I had changed, and he invited me to come visit. Since I hadn’t seen my daughter, Meg, since she moved here to Granford, I thought it was an ideal opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Oh, that’s a poor analogy, isn’t it? But my husband was away, I wanted to see what Meg had done with the house, and then there was this unexpected call from a long-lost friend in the same area. I had no other commitments, so I drove up.”
    Without telling me , Meg thought, but she refrained from voicing that. If Elizabeth was telling the truth, Marcus could no doubt verify her story quickly enough.
    If? Did she actually doubt her mother’s story? Whatever her other faults, Elizabeth Corey was scrupulously honest, with loved ones and strangers alike, sometimes to the point of insulting them. But there was something off about her mother’s attitude, not that Detective Marcus would necessarily notice. But Meg had.
    “You don’t work outside the home, Mrs. Corey?” Marcus pressed.
    “I’m somewhat retired.” When Marcus looked confused, she said, “I’m a freelance consultant to nonprofit organizations. I do some grant writing, organize direct mail campaigns, that sort of thing, for those