Shallow Graves by Jeffery Deaver

Author:Jeffery Deaver
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
ISBN: 9781451621419
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1992-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

APPLES.

A thousand apples, a hundred thousand. A million.

Pellam’d never seen so many apples in his life. And in so many forms. Apple pies, fritters, turnovers, apple butter, jelly, pickled apples and candied apples. You could dunk for them. You could buy them fresh by the bushel, buy them dried and painted and glued together into wreaths and wall hangings shaped like geese and pigs.

There were girls dressed up like apples. All the boys seemed to have round, rouge cheeks.

A woman tried to sell him a chance to win a Dutch apple pie by tossing a ring onto a board with apples nailed onto it.

“I don’t really care for apples,” he told her.

The football field was filled with more than a thousand people, milling through the booths, playing the games and examining the junk for sale—sweaters, wooden trinket boxes, clocks made from driftwood, ceramic, macrame. Janine had a jewelry booth. Pellam had homed in on it right away, waited until she was busy making a sale, and did the obligatory appearance. All she had time to say was “Dinner tomorrow, remember?”

He nodded.

“At four. Don’t you forget, lover boy.” She winked and blew him a kiss, her face glowing.

Pellam estimated half the crowd was tourists, half was locals. No one older than seventeen seemed exactly sure why they were there. The tourists were catching the tail of some indigenous upstate experience—the country, the country!—and holding on for a while, buying vases, jewelry, decorations, food to take back to their Manhattan apartments. The Cleary moms and dads were gossiping and doing some serious eating. The kids, of course, were the only ones really enjoying themselves because for them it was nothing more than tons of apples. And who needed more than that on a nice fall day?

No more ’Roids. He’d left the camera in the camper. Now, he was just another tourist scoping out the leaves, the booths, the scenery.

The Toyota showed up five minutes later, racing through the parking lot and skidding to a stop on the crumbling asphalt. Meg saw him right away and waved. Keith wasn’t with her but Sam was. The boy waved energetically. He wondered if Sam had said anything about Pellam’s tendency to collect lethal weapons.

Like the other night at dinner, she looked ten years younger than the upstate matron who’d visited him in the clinic. Her hair wasn’t teased and stiff but was tied back in a ponytail. She wore tight jeans and a dark paisley high-necked blouse under a suede jacket. A silver antique pin was at her throat.

The boy stayed close. “Hi, Mr. Pellam.”

“Howdy, Sam.”

“Hello,” Meg said to Pellam. He nodded in reply.

They were suddenly enveloped in a large crowd of Izod-shirted Manhattanites. The men with curly dark hair, the women in black stretch pants. Everybody had great forearms and calves, courtesy of the New York Health & Racquet Club.

The gang passed and they found themselves alone.

“You made it,” Meg said.

“Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

“Here,” Meg called. “A present.”

She pitched him an apple.

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