Who Killed Red Delicious?

By Eric Rozenman (July 2025) 

 

Who killed Red Delicious? It was a serious question. Murder always is. Or should be, though you can’t tell all the time. Sometimes a killer turns out to be the respected Scoutmaster who, after years of aggravation, does away with a helicopter parent. A decent lawyer can plea bargain that down to justifiable homicide and, anticipating good behavior, a short sentence. Sometimes, of course, the killer is a mass murderer who happens to run a country, though all agree to pretend otherwise at state dinners.

But foreign policy’s not my thing. Being a private detective is. And not in some throbbing, intrigue-filled city like Los Angeles, New York or Cleveland. I threw Cleveland in there to see if you were paying attention. Cleveland’s where I grew up, a kid cheering for home run-thumping future Hall of Famer Jim Thome and the rest of his Cleveland Indians teammates.

Indians. There, I said it. Not the “Guardians,” short for Guardians of Traffic, the eight statues at the ends of the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge running west from downtown over the Cuyahoga River (which hasn’t burned for over 50 years, so don’t even think that thought). Not bad for a bridge, maybe. But for a Major League Baseball team with more than a century and a quarter of history and previously known as the Rustlers, Lakeshores, Naps, Spiders and, yes, Indians, lame. And what about the Atlanta Braves? Where’s the pressure on them to change their name? The Atlanta Native American Indigenous Peoples? I don’t think so.

No, not diplomacy or social activism. I’m a P.I.—one of two, the one with the higher per diem—in Apple Creek, Ohio, population 10,735. If you believe the U.S. Census. P.I. rule number one: Even if your mother tells you, check it out. Apple Creek is an hour or so southwest of Cleveland, just off I-71 and not far from Mansfield.

Why Apple Creek? First, because as the Borscht Belt comedian Myron Cohen famously observed, “Everybody got to be someplace.” Bada-boom! But second, and seriously, because 20 years of teaching American history at North Central State Community College to 18- and 19-year-olds who barely made it out of high school and to 40-somethings in need of a career change and a manageable elective along the way, could not be followed by another 20 such to retirement. Not bearably. Plus, telling that woman a dozen years younger than my 47 at the end of the bar in the Old Bag O’ Nails Pub in Mansfield I was a private detective was more likely to lead to “Really? Tell me more …” than introducing myself as a community college professor, Ph.D. dissertation on the history of the Fifth Amendment—published by Sewanee University Press and cited no more than a dozen times since, but who’s counting?

So, who did kill Red Delicious? The list of plausible suspects was long. It began, of course, with Granny Smith, whose hospitality at her eponymously named pie shop fooled no one; and proceeded through Red’s introverted—or was that just an act?—half-brother Golden Delicious; Honey Crisppe, who, more cutting than crisp was no honey; through Mac Intosh, the half-Scottish, half-Japanese proprietor of the Apple Creek Hunting and Fishing Emporium, “Guns and Rods Galore!”; to the not-nearly-as-notorious-as-she-sounded Pink Lady (on immigration papers Lady Dana Pinkhouse-Terwillinger), owner of Pink’s Tea House, directly across Main Street from Granny Smith’s and justly famed for its chocolate croissants.

They populated my top tier suspect list. There were others, but I didn’t trouble my client, Dr. Jonathan Eppelbaum, researcher and professor, with them. No need to worry him about the prospect of a lengthy investigation. Not with Hermione Schultz, Apple Creek’s other P.I. and my nemesis, at least regarding income, always ready to undercut my rates. Plus, Eppelbaum had another suspect altogether in mind.

The professor was head plant pathologist at The Ohio State University’s Apple Creek Research Station. Yes, the definite article is legally part of the name, though alumni of the older Ohio University in Athens refer to their bigger cousin in Columbus as “An Ohio State University.” Red Delicious was one of his subcontractors, working on a joint U.S. Department of Agriculture/Ohio State Agriculture Department grant to restore the crisp, firm sweetness of the apple for which he had been named. Someone, or something, had caused Red Delicious—the apples, not the man—to become large, fibrous when not mealy, and bland to the taste. What, or who, and why? Red thought he was closing in on the answer when he turned up dead, literally, his purplish corpse hanging by its heels—his custom-made penny loafers, with a shiny new penny gleaming from each shoe, still on—in Dr. Eppelbaum’s orchard at the research center.

If Eppelbaum knew that more than a few people around town called him “Eppelseed” instead of by his proper name, he never let on. As I had been fond of telling my history classes, John Chapman, the real Johnny Appleseed, had planted orchards in the early 1800s from western Virginia through Ohio to Illinois. He did so as part of what his countrymen two centuries later would recognize as a real estate development scheme. Buying land from corporate speculators like the Ohio Company of Associates, Chapman indefatigably seeded orchards on the edge of the ever westward moving frontier. Pioneers, who received grants of 100 acres provided they grew apple and peach orchards and lived on their homesteads at least five years, happily did business with Johnny Appleseed.

“Curiously,” as Dr. Eppelbaum told me the day he walked the one flight up to my second-floor office in the same block of Main Street as Granny Smith’s Pie Hole and Pink’s Tea House, “Chapman’s apples were small, bitter things by today’s standards. Not much for eating, they made excellent hard cider. And hard cider was one of the most widely-consumed liquids in early America, given the dangers of bacteria-filled drinking water.”

“Interesting,” I replied, “Something similar was true for corn: commonly grown, more easily and profitably shipped in liquid form than solid, and, when it became the first domestically produced item to be taxed by the new federal government, the cause of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791.

“Not only did Americans drink hard cider and whiskey—many times more per capita than we do today—because it was safer than water, but also because life on the frontier was hard. There was no aspirin, no ibuprofen, let alone Novocain or whatever has taken its place, not to mention morphine.”

“Or OxyContin,” Dr. Eppelbaum said, shaking his head. There’d been a dozen or so overdose deaths due to OxyContin, most of it illegal, in Richland County in the past two years, but I hadn’t been hired to investigate any of them. “Deaths of Depression,” the Mansfield News-Journal headlined them. “But here’s the even more curious historical fact that may weigh on your investigation, somehow,” he added. “One of the varieties Chapman planted, over time and apparently due to chance, climate and soil differences from European orchards to those on the American frontier, developed into the red delicious variety. The former red delicious variety so many knew and loved. The one strangely dying out now.

“Or maybe not so strangely,” Eppelbaum muttered, as much to himself as to me. Little drops of sweat were beginning to stand out on the scientist’s forehead and his hands trembled. “Do you have a glass of water?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, and, watching the big bubbles gurgle to the top of the glass jar, filled an old-fashioned cone-shaped paper cup from the cooler.

Eppelbaum pulled a small, plastic container from his pocket and removed a little, yellow pill. With a gulp of water, he swallowed it. “Blood pressure,” he said.

Blood pressure my foot, I thought. I was pretty sure I had recognized the pill as Valium, a tranquilizer. This man is even more troubled by the murder of Red Delicious than he admits, I realized. Troubled personally, not only for his research lab.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Qui bono? Who benefits? Or, follow the money,” Eppelbaum said, his voice picking up. “It’s always possible some natural development—a genetic deformation, an as-yet-unrecognized fungus, perhaps a microscopic insect infestation—could be responsible. But Red didn’t think so. He was pretty sure the change, the slow deterioration in the red delicious variety, resulted from human intervention. Manipulation, I should say, some kind of purposefully altered DNA. You see, a few strains of the older, desirable red delicious apples continue, mostly from a handful of orchards in Washington state. There are enough of them that some hospitals give them to patients and visitors. ‘An apple a day’ and all that. But such apples are not in general commercial circulation anymore. You almost never find them in supermarkets.”

“So, people who would gain by taking red delicious’ market share would have a motive?”

Eppelbaum glanced at me appraisingly. Because either I’d made an insightful observation, or because I’d just mastered the obvious? Hard to tell.

“Yes,” he said, his tone indicating he meant “of course.” “The big apple co-ops. They buy, brand and market the harvests of local growers. They might have motive.”

“Any of them active in our area?” I asked.

“Only one, U.S. Premium Apples,” Eppelbaum replied. “The U.S. doesn’t stand for United States, but rather Uncle Shimon, the rapacious Shimon Lotsoff, founder of the co-op, now in semi-retirement in Boca Raton, Florida, I believe. He’s handed day-to-day operations of the firm to his daughter, the 40- or 45-year-old Lydia Lotzov—she’s not married, I don’t know why she spells her last name like that. She looks like a former movie starlet and does business like an old-time Chicago gangster.” At this the professor fell silent, put his head in his hands and closed his eyes.

Then, looking up again, squarely at me, Eppelbaum said, “But what reason could Lotsoff or Lotzov have for favoring one or more apple varieties over another? Their co-op controls wholesale markets in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, about 13 percent of the national total, regardless. But whatever the reason, whoever it was, Mr. Jonas, I’m counting on you to find the person—or persons—who killed Red Delicious. No doubt the same ones killing red delicious.” Ah, the old department of redundancy department, I mused. “It’s not only the research grants,” Eppelbaum continued, “the continuation of which may be at stake here, but also because Red was a friend of mine.”

Sure, Eppelbaum, I thought. It’s not the money. That’s what they all say. What I said was, “I’ll take the case. You know my rates; they’re posted over the office door. Discourages the unserious. One hundred dollars a day expenses, $1,000 a week fee. And an extra $1,000 each time I get shot at.”

“Each shot, or each incident of being shot at?” asked the budget-conscious client.

“Each incident,” I said generously.

The good doctor gulped, said nothing, but nodded. His hands were not trembling now, but sweat still stood out on his forehead.

I said, “How much are the grants worth?”

“About one and a-half million dollars.”

“What’s your total annual grant revenue?” I asked.

“Just over $4 million,” he said.

“So, losing the red delicious money would be a big hit to the research center.”

“A hit yes,” he added, “but sustainable. The center also receives an annual operating budget from the Ohio state government and the university of a little more than $700,000. Including, if you are wondering, about $35,000 for the director’s discretionary expenses.”

Out of which the Jason Jonas Detective Agency’s bill for the current fiscal year will take a bite, I thought with satisfaction. Premature satisfaction when it came to my share, which I could not know then.

“Anything else I should be aware of, anything unusual, out-of-the-ordinary regarding Dr. Delicious, especially in the days before he was murdered?” I asked.

Eppelbaum looked at me appraisingly, like he was trying to decide whether to speak or not. Finally, he said, “There may have been one thing. Perhaps it matters, perhaps it doesn’t. He asked me repeatedly to expedite his request for a new, computer-enhanced microscope.”

“Did he say why?”

“Only that he’d noticed a strange fungus on some of his specimens, and he needed a finer resolution to be certain of its identification,” Eppelbaum said.

Dr. Jonathan Eppelbaum hadn’t been gone five minutes before in sauntered Hermione Schultz, my daytime competition and nighttime companion, when she felt like it. Which was only occasionally but always memorably.

“So, big boy, you’re on the Red Delicious case?”

“What’s it to you, big girl?

“Better solve it quick, or your competition might snatch it from you.”

“That’ll be the day,” I riposted cleverly. Rising, I shrugged on my trench coat, noticed again that it needed to visit the dry cleaner, and pushed my brown fedora onto my head. If clothes made the man, I looked like a private eye, I thought, glancing at my image in the mirror behind the coat rack. A private eye in a B-movie filmed circa 1950. I was long overdue for a sartorial upgrade.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Hermione Schultz asked in her whiskey-throated voice, the words sounding as much like an invitation as a query.

“To Granny Smith’s for a slice, to be washed down with a cup of Earl Grey at the Pink Lady. Want to come along and watch a real detective at work?” I teased.

“Work?” Hermione snorted. “I know you, Jason Jonas. You’re going for your afternoon snack and you’ll bill it as surveillance.”

“And where in the P.I. Handbook does it say the two can’t overlap? Venn diagrams and all that. Anyway, sometimes those little Psych 101 graphics help clarify thinking.”

Hermione didn’t snort this time. She guffawed.

***

Granny Smith’s Pie Hole featured seven or eight white painted wooden tables, each with seats for either two or four customers, wooden chairs painted in the light green of Granny Smith apples, a glass case with racks of apple, cherry, blueberry, strawberry—the latter when in season locally—and pecan pies, chocolate and angel food cakes, and a few wedges of cheddar cheese to go with the apple pies. At the counter one could order from a variety of coffees and hot chocolates, Scotch or bourbon whiskey and red or white wines, but no teas. (Years back Granny obtained a liquor license. No one quite understood how.) Overall, the place was clean, the service efficient, the pies and cakes excellent. The ambience, so-so, but that didn’t matter. No one went to Granny Smith’s for atmosphere, let alone the company of the proprietress, an usually tall, raw-boned woman with a tendency to smile at the misfortune of others.

Taking a table for two, I pulled out a chair for Hermione so she’d be looking out the big front window onto the street. I took a chair perpendicular to hers so I could face the counter and cash register and watch Granny make change. I noticed two suspicious things right off: One, an Asian waitress at Granny’s wore a dress bearing gold piping along the collar edges and on the cuffs, like that of a female naval officer. It was freshly cleaned and starched. And two, one of the waitress’ fingertips bore purple smudges.

I ordered a slice of apple pie and a cup of coffee. No mocha, no latte, nothing with soy milk and cinnamon. Just a cup of coffee, black, with one sugar. Hermione ordered a small hot chocolate but no pie.

“I’ll have a bite or two of yours. I must watch my figure, you know.”

Believe me, I knew. Her figure, from the top of her thighs to her armpits, was all curves. Even her cheeks—all of them—were rounded, like those of a squeezable infant. She wasn’t the only one watching her figure. In addition to me, there were the three other men in the Pie Hole at that time—a kid working behind the counter and two who looked like retirees, both in farmer’s overalls. Like the pies and cakes, Hermione was an attraction.

When the old men rose to leave, I got up to follow them. “Here,” I whispered, flipping her a $20 bill. “You pay up. I’ve got to ask these two gents—apple growers, or retired apple growers, if I’m not mistaken, a few questions. Meet me at the Pink Lady.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Hermione said, leaving the $20 on the table, “I’m coming with you.” But I didn’t follow the two men right away. After dropping the cash at the register, I stopped just inside the front door. A poster stood on a nearby easel. Professionally printed, on semi-glossy poster board, it read:

 

 

THIS COMING SATURDAY AT THE APPLE CREEK PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Children’s Book Event—the Only Richland County Presentation:

Granny Smith (of Granny Smith’s Pie-Hole!) will read from her famous series for kids of all ages. Selections from When Your Alphabet Soup Spells ‘Murder’ and Lima Beans, Lima Ohio, Lima Peru. What Did Kill the Incas? for young readers, and from the beloved, award-winning young-adult series, Dick and Jane Get Busted!, chapter one of Dick and Jane on Parole and chapter two of the latest release in the series, Dick and Jane Get Busted Again!

Hot chocolate, coffee and pie from Granny Smith’s free of charge. Book copies will be available for purchase.

Doors open at 10 a.m., event begins promptly at 10:30 a.m. Sponsored by the Apple Creek Public Library, the Mansfield News-Journal, Granny Smith’s Pie Hole and the Appleseed Elementary School PTA+.

 

 

Hmm, I thought, taking in the poster. I might have to forget driving over to Dawson’s Ridge Par and Pub outside Mansfield for my weekly Saturday morning round on the friendly nine-hole layout. Walking, of course, not riding a cart.

“Hmm, I agree,” said Hermione.

The woman could read my mind. Which, most of the time, wasn’t too hard.

Walking fast, I caught up to the erstwhile Pie-Hole patrons in the next block.

“Excuse me,” I said, a bit too breathless to sound casual. “I’m conducting a public opinion survey. What do you think of Granny Smith and her shop?”

“The pie’s always great” one of them said, barely moving his lips, his facial muscles tight.

“And what about the proprietress herself, Granny Smith?”

The pair exchanged glances and to each other more than to me, the first said, “Got to get going, cows are overdue for milking.” To which the second replied, “Yeah, I must get back and shear the sheep.” With that, they turned and hurried off.

“Shear the sheep?” Hermione snorted. This was getting to be a habit with her. “It’s barely mid-summer; the sheep were sheared not more than two months ago. Which reminds me, you look ridiculously overdressed in that shabby trench coat and fedora.”

“I know that,” I said, irritably, watching the pair shrink into the distance. “I mean, about the sheep, not the trench coat.”

“Just wanted to make sure, city boy.”

***

At the Pink Lady, I took a table all the way in the back. This time I wanted to be able to see the clientele, action at the counter and out the front window to the street. Hermione, not wanting to miss anything, didn’t face me but pulled her chair all the way around beside me.

You’re close enough to chew on my ear,” I hissed.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Except, who could you bill for it?”

The waitress plopped a little metal pot of Earl Grey in front of me, causing hot liquid to spurt from the spout. She also left a tiny tray with packets of sweeteners—white sugar, brown sugar, Splenda, Sweet N’ Low, and Smucker’s honey. By the time the average person made up his or her mind, the tea was cold. Only in America. And Smucker’s; what kind of name was that for a once-tiny apple butter manufacturer in Orrville, Ohio that from 1897 had grown, conglomerate style, to produce jams, jellies, ice cream toppings, syrups, even—I’d have to be starving—“Uncrustables,”  hand-held snacks like Turkey and Colby Bits and offer recipes for the likes of “Savory Meatballs” (glazed in either regular or low-sugar Concord Grape Jelly)? Smucker’s certainly had an interest in fruits and berries, including apples.

Hermione ordered jasmine tea and a chocolate croissant, warmed. She gave me the death stare, which so much as dared me to ask about her figure comment at the Pie Hole, not a half hour before.

“Warmed?” the waitress sniffed, like seven or eight seconds in the microwave would be an imposition. I sipped, savored, and thought. Apple butter. Conglomerates. A waitress with purple-smudged fingers. Someone killed Red Delicious, who had turned purple. Why? Who?

Hermione was whispering. “Now, pretend you’re a detective. What do you see? And don’t rotate your head on that bull neck of yours—working out at the YMCA again, eh?—like a radar dish scanning the horizon, back-and-forth, back-and-forth. Be subtle for once. Don’t let people notice that you’re noticing them.”

Again, I sipped my tea, staring inconspicuously—I hoped—over the rim.

“Well?” Hermione prodded.

I recognized most of the patrons. Apple Creek’s a small town, after all. Which meant they probably recognized me. And Hermione too. But near the front window, in the corner opposite the door, sat a stranger. She was with one of the local real estate agents, Harley F. Rudder. Rudder was 55 or so, a mane of black hair going silver, distinguished-looking except for the potbelly he’d begun nurturing a few years back. He was wearing light gray slacks, white dress shirt open at the collar and a navy-blue blazer. The business-professional look, third decade, twenty-first century. It differed from the business-professional look of the ninth decade of the twentieth century 40 years earlier only by losing the necktie and ditching the wingtips for soft, leather-like tie shoes on white crepe soles.

Around town Rudder was Harley, prominent but affable. Rotary Club vice president, sponsor of a Little League baseball team, annually appreciated donor to the hospital improvement fund. Apple Creek and the Mansfield News-Journal knew him well. But the woman with him, who and what was she? She could have been a suburban mom dressed up to visit the principal’s office about her wayward child, if Apple Creek were a suburb and a particularly affluent one. But in a town with one large high school, one large middle school, and four elementaries, she was a bit overdressed for a visit to the office. On the other hand, her wardrobe made sense for an expensive lawyer, insurance executive or senior government official. Black pumps with three-inch heels, navy blue blazer over a white blouse and matching blue skirt. A small gold lapel pin that from a distance looked like the U.S. Marine Corps’ globe-and-anchor insignia and small gold earrings set off the apparel.

Her attractive face possessed an exotic quality. She reminded me of the young Ronnie Spector of the 1950s and ‘60s girl group The Ronettes. Spector (later Greenfield) was part African American, part Cherokee and part Irish. If I had to guess, I would have said this woman with Rudder looked part Hispanic, part Chinese and maybe a bit Anglo to boot. Her hair was medium cut, wavy and golden brown, her make-up understated but for light red lipstick.

“Autumn Mist by Clairol,” Hermoine whispered, tapping her own hair. “Crackling Embers by Revlon,” she added, sliding a finger across her lips.

“The facts ma’am, just the facts,” I murmured, Joe Friday “Dragnet”-style.

Whatever and whoever she was, the woman and Rudder leaned across their table toward each other and spoke softly. Hermione slid her cell phone out of her purse and angled it up from our table, trying for a picture of Rudder and his companion. As she did so the insufferable waitress plopped the little dish with her croissant directly in front of Hermione, huffed again and this time loudly before turning away. Rudder and the woman unknown glanced our way. “Foiled!” Hermione hissed, palming her phone.

Rudder and his partner left soon after. But Hermione, quickly at the tea shop window, snapped a shot of their car’s license plate. The vehicle wasn’t the real estate man’s metallic teal Cadillac Escalade SUV that he wrote off for tax purposes as his business auto, nor was it his BMW 530 sedan, but rather a freshly waxed, black Mustang GT with tinted windows and Florida plates. She was driving. So maybe running down the number would tell me something.

***

I left the Pink Lady with Hermoine still finishing her chocolate croissant (so much for watching her figure) and headed to the residence of Dr. Delicious’ half-brother, who conveniently lived in the area.  After several knocks and ringing of doorbell, he answered, seemingly reluctantly.  Well, he had just lost his brother, I thought.

“Would you mind if we asked you a few questions?  You know we are pursuing the case of your brother’s murder.”

“I suppose,” he answered.

“How would you describe your relationship?” I asked.

Golden Delicious didn’t answer right away. Instead, he lowered his head, looked at the floor and stroked his chin. You would have thought he was pondering one of the great metaphysical questions of our day, like would oldies stations be playing Taylor Swift songs twenty years from now? Or would there even be oldies stations? Finally, he said, in a voice so soft it might have been hand cream, “Who said I had a relationship with him?”

“No one,” I replied, his passive defensiveness putting me on heightened alert. “You’re his half-brother, so I assumed …”

“Don’t you find, Mr. Jonas,” he interrupted me, “that assumptions often prove unfounded?” He paused, looked somewhere to the left of my face, then put his head down again, stared at the floor and stroked his chin. This was getting exasperating.

Edgy, I was about to snap at him when Golden Delicious resumed speaking. “Would you believe that my half-brother and I rarely saw each other, let alone spoke?”

“In Apple Creek, population just 10,000-plus, that would be considered unlikely,” I conceded, trying to sound amiable.

“Nevertheless, quite true,” he insisted.  “I have a sister in Miami Beach and am close to her and her family,” he said. “I’m also eleven years older than Red. We only spent a few years growing up together in the same house. And Red, and his sister—my half-sister Rosita, three years younger than Red—were the apple of our father’s eye. So, to speak.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “So to speak. Are you in touch with Rosita?”

“Beyond annual Christmas cards with family ‘year-in-review’ missives, no.”

“What does she do?” I asked.

“A little of this and a little of that, as I gather from her notes. Yoga, pickle ball, dabbles in managing an art gallery. Her husband’s an airline pilot. They have one child, a daughter who went to Julliard, or maybe Berklee, and now plays drums in something called a ‘thrash metal’ band. Or maybe ‘death metal.’ I’m not sure. Rosita’s little gallery specializes in large post-modern abstract paintings by artists from South America. Though how one can distinguish post-modern abstract from simply abstract I have no idea. Anyway, she provided a link to her gallery’s website in one Christmas card a few years ago. Those paintings appear to be in demand by people with lots of wall space and even more money.”

“No doubt. But what about Red? If you didn’t run into each other much around town, did you talk on the phone, e-mail or text? Did he send an annual card like Rosita?”

“I’m afraid not, detective.” The man’s voice, which had become more normally audible as we talked about Rosita, now faded back into the barely-a-whisper range

“I have to ask you; did he have any enemies? Someone who had a motive to murder him?”

One more time the man bowed his head, stroked his chin, and remained silent before answering. I wanted to yank him up by his skinny shoulders, shake him a while, and demand a reply loud enough it didn’t need repeating. But instead, I waited, trying hard to seem patient. Rule number three in the P.I.’s Handbook: Never fill the other person’s silence. He or she will talk first. Eventually. Most of the time. It’s a lot like Rule number two in the Comedian’s Handbook: If they’re laughing, don’t step on your own punchline, ever. Not even if you think the next joke’s a killer.

It worked, finally. “I don’t know of anyone by name, but I’m not completely surprised someone did. Red was a research scientist, a botanist. But that didn’t make him the quiet, easy to get along with type.” Like you, I thought. “Red knew he was smart and he liked attention. From his colleagues, of course, but the general public if he could get it. Like his discovery of how to extend the shelf-life of cider for months. USA Today and the Wall Street Journal both wrote it up, and he had the articles mounted and framed—two examples of each, one for his lab and one for his house. So Red had an ego. He also could be bull-headed. Once he settled on an opinion or course of action, pity the person who tried to dissuade him. Except for his mistress, of course.”

“Mistress?”

Golden Delicious looked at me the same way Jonathan Eppelbaum had when I deduced the obvious about someone having a motive to ruin red delicious—the apple variety, not the botanist. “I would have thought you knew,” he said.

Taking it as a reproach, I replied testily. “We’re just at the start of the investigation. What was her name?”

“Well, they didn’t advertise it, even kept two residences, but Apple Creek is, as you’ve asserted, a small town. His was infatuated with the Pink Lady. Not the tea shop, but its owner.”

Taking a moment to make sure my voiced remained even, I asked, “how long had they been … together?”

“I can’t be sure.” Golden Delicious replied, “As I said, my contact with Red was sporadic at best. But I would guess at least two years.”

“And there was no recent quarrel, no break-up?”

“Quite the opposite,” Mr. Delicious said. “The last time I saw Red, he told me he was in the market for an engagement ring.”

I stood, shrugging on my trench coat. My shirt clinging to my torso, I had to admit Hermione had been right. The trench coat made no sense in mid-summer Ohio heat.

“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been most helpful.” Dropping my card on the little table between us, I added, “give me a call if you think of anything else.” He said nothing, and I left him looking at the floor again, but now instead of stroking his chin, he massaged his temples. If ever someone ever needed a gift card to the Thai massage place in the Best of the Creek strip mall at the edge of town, it was Golden Delicious.

***

Speaking of the strip mall, I decided to stop into Mac Intosh’s Apple Creek Hunting and Fishing Emporium, “Guns and Rods Galore!” on my way back to the office. It was by now late afternoon, nearly closing time. But I was in luck. Not a customer in the place and Mac, or should I think of him as Intosh?, was leaning idly at the counter near the back of the store.

Fishing gear of all sorts—rods, reels, lures, waders, nets and more—lined the wall to my left. Along the wall on the right—rifles, shotguns, telescopic sights, targets, even a couple military looking semi-automatic AR-15s and AK-47 Kalashnikov knockoffs. Just the thing for a boy eager to hike the woods in his first deer season. Wipe out an entire herd with one trigger pull.

In the middle of the store, arranged so they formed two aisles back to the counter, one along the fishing wall, the other paralleling the long guns, was a series of glass cases. The first few included more fishing equipment, the last couple ammunition, self-loading tools and knives, and closest to the counter, handguns. Should the need arise, I thought, one could nicely outfit a platoon, if not a company, at Mac Intosh’s. Just looking around the place, I felt the need arising, in self-defense, of course.

About half-way back I stopped, pulled a gleaming 20-gauge over-and-under double-barrel shotgun off the wall and tried to put it up to my shoulder. A thin metal cable attached to the trigger guard at one end, bolted to the holder on the wall, prevented me.

“Here, let me unlock that,” Mac Intosh said, ambling out from behind the counter. “Beautiful piece, isn’t it?” he said, keying open a cylindrical lock at the wall-end of the cable. I shouldered the weapon and aimed toward the front window. Perfectly balanced, its wooden stock richly polished, the gun-metal blue upper barrel delicately engraved with a whimsical filigree, I was holding not just a shotgun but a work of art, a museum quality Beretta 640, price $4,900.

“Expensive,” Mac Intosh smiled, almost ruefully, “but worth it. Beretta makes even more costly shotguns, some into five figures, none that I carry or anyone in town would buy. But frankly, for sport shooting—trap, clay pigeons, real pheasants, even simple, passionate collecting, you can’t beat it. I have one at home, in a locked glass case in the rec room. I shoot with it maybe twice a year, but I admire it nearly every day.”

“What does Mrs. Mac Intosh think?” I asked, trying to match his amiability and maybe learn something.

He smiled again, definitely rueful. “She says I can have a collection of one, that one, but my job is to sell the others. Big picture, she’s right, of course.”

“They usually are,” I commiserated. “Mr. Mac Intosh,” I started. “Just call me Mac,” he said, the familial vestige of a Scottish brogue combining disconcertingly with more than a hint of Japanese intonations.

“Mac,” I resumed, “I’m Jason Jonas, a private investigator…”

“I thought I recognized you. You were in two or three years ago, bought a Glock. Let me see … yes, a Glock G-26 subcompact, with the larger 17-round magazine. Good for concealed carry, small enough for a lot of places on a man your size, the ankle even. Fast fire, good accuracy for a small weapon. You could drop it in mud, pick it up and start firing again immediately. Used it in action?”

“Only at the range, thankfully. Look, Mac …” He interrupted again. “How could I forget you? That gun retailed for $519, I had it on sale for $499, and you insisted on $460.” This time Mac Intosh just laughed, not at all ruefully. “I’d go broke in a hurry with discounts like that. What’d we settle for—?”

“As if you’ve forgotten. We ‘settled’ on $495.”

“A more than fair price,” he said, as if enjoying a story with an old friend. “What can I do for you today?”

“I’d like to know if Red Delicious, the botanist from the agricultural extension station, was ever in your store?”

Mac Intosh did not even try to pronounce “agricultural,” thankfully. “From the farm school? The man who was murdered? Yes, he was, once.”

“Did he buy anything?”

“He did. A Smith & Wesson 340 PD five-shot revolver. It lists now for $1,100, but I let him have it, the gun, I mean, for $1,050.”

“More generosity,” I smiled.

“Like your Glock, that 340 PD is excellent for concealed carry, snub nose barrel, hardly 12 ounces loaded,” he said, always the salesman.

“Did he say why he wanted it?” I asked.

“Yes, for protection. That’s what most of them say, unless they tell you they enjoy target practice.”

“Did he say who he wanted protection from?”

“Just that he’d started making patrols at night on the grounds of the orchards because someone had been damaging the apple trees.”

“How long ago was this? I asked.

“About a month before he died, I would say. But why do you want to know? The police already were here, asking me the same questions,” he said.

“When was that?”

“Oh, a couple of days after they found his body.”

“Is there anything else, something you didn’t tell the police? I asked.

“Nothing at the time. But a few days after they were here, Dr. Delicious’ boss at the farming station, Dr. Eppelbaum came in. Boy, was that a nervous man!”

“How so?”

“He stammered, his hands shook, he could hardly walk straight.”

“Blood pressure,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing. But let me guess,” I said. “He wanted to buy a gun, for protection.”

“Exactly right,” Mac Intosh replied. “I didn’t ask him protection from what, or whom, not after what happened to Delicious, but he shook so that I told him a handgun or a rifle wouldn’t do him much good—he was in no condition to aim straight and squeeze off a round in anything other than the general direction of his fears. I encouraged him to put the money toward a security guard, but he wouldn’t hear of it. So, I told him he should get a shotgun, something with dispersal to the target. That way he’d be more likely to hit whoever or whatever he was aiming at.”

“And did he get something?”

“I ordered him a Henry Repeating Arms .410 lever action shotgun, the shorter 19.75-inch barrel version. Didn’t figure he could handle the 24-inch, if it ever came to that. Something a newcomer to shooting like himself could handle without being knocked on his butt, but that would get the job done. He ordered it, about $1,200 all told, shipping, handling, tax and so on, but it’s not in yet. Any day now.”

“You haven’t told the police this?”

“No, like I said, it happened after they were here.”

“And they haven’t been back?”

“No.”

I said thanks, told him to call me when he got a .20 gauge over-and-under shotgun that was almost as good as the Beretta but sold for $800 or $900—as if there were such a thing—and, more seriously, to let me know when Eppelbaum’s .410 came in. I left a $20 bill on the counter and walked out. It was Eppelbaum’s money anyway. He could add it to the cost of the Henry .410.

It was dark now and I was hungry. But first, I had to go to the office and draft a memo on today’s interviews. There was a lot of information, even if I didn’t recognize all of it, and I didn’t want to forget anything.

***

An hour later I had nearly finished speaking my notes into a recorder when Hermione entered. “Really,” she said, “you must do something about this office. Did you intend this shoddy look? Because it doesn’t inspire client confidence, you know.”

“It doesn’t?” I replied, affecting a hurt expression and hang-dog look to go with it. “And here I thought it would remind people of Bogart’s ‘Samuel Spade Investigations’ office in The Maltese Falcon…”

“Look, my amorous competitor: Classic though it may be, that movie was filmed 85 years ago—that’s practically a century! And most of your prospective clients have never heard of it, much less seen it.”

“Their loss,” I mumbled.

“You should get a decorator in here next week. And don’t think of saying no. In fact, think of saying yes, yes you’re taking me to dinner at La Paloma Steakhouse now. And after one martini for me, Manhattan for you, and a petite sirloin, medium, we’re going to my place and I will leave bite marks on your shoulder and an electric charge surging from the base of your spine to that plasma between your ears. But not before telling you about Harley Rudder’s Pink Lady companion. I ran the Mustang’s license plate number.”

“Well, when you put it that way, how can I refuse? We redecorate next week!”

“Oh, and trash that trench coat, Columbo. Amazon delivered the brown leather bomber jacket I ordered for you. We’ll get you into the current century yet.”

“Time travel,” I said, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “This woman can arrange anything.”

La Paloma was about six miles south of Apple Creek and roughly the same distance north of Mansfield. Established right after World War II and designed to resemble a big red barn, it developed first as something of a disreputable road house—food, gambling and, it was rumored, women. Remodeled in the late 1960s in low-slung, modern style, it muddled on as a supper club, then family restaurant until a third set of owners took over in 1999. Its latest architectural iteration was in Northwest ski resort style, a sprawling expanse of red-brown log cabin with a warm, upholstered and carpeted interior indirectly lit by suspended, green-shaded lamps and featuring a sizeable, fieldstone fireplace. The fireplace was gas so the fire always gave off a low, inviting flicker. Open front and back so one could look through the flames, the fireplace neatly separated the bar from the dining section. La Paloma’s menu featured surf-and-turf, the fish and steaks good if not outstanding, homemade sourdough bread and “endless salad bar.”

Hermoine and I took our customary booth at the back of the dining area. This let us watch who came in and, through the fireplace, get a glimpse of those at the bar as well as keep an eye on fellow diners. It was Wednesday evening and La Paloma, though hardly full, evinced a pleasant bustle.

After we were seated and perused the menu—not that our choices often varied, usually the petit sirloin for her, grilled salmon for me—I said, “So, the license plate?”

Hermoine put down the martini she’d been sipping, slipped her tongue once across her lips, as much for my benefit as her own, and said: “Rudder’s companion rented the Mustang today at John Glenn International Airport and apparently drove straight up from Columbus to meet him at the Pink Lady. Her name is Muriel May….”

“Sounds like a …”

“I know, I know, sounds like a stripper. Try to keep your mind on your work, on our work, for few minutes,” Hermoine hissed. “And she used a corporate credit card.”

“Wait, our work?”

“Yes, from now on in this case, we’re partners. Equal partners.”

“I was afraid of that,” I said. “Anyway, what corporation?” I was intrigued.

“You shouldn’t even have to guess,” Hermoine replied.

I arched an eyebrow. “One of the big five controlling our lives? Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta-Facebook or … no! You’re kidding. Apple?”

“Apple.”

“Some kind of cosmic joke being played here in Apple Creek,” I said, as much in a low whistle as speech.

“I don’t know about jokes, but I do suspect coincidences,” Hermoine said. “Look through the fireplace. See the couple pulling out the bar stools?”

It was Rudder and the woman in the Mustang, Muriel May. “I wonder who’s following whom?” Hermione said. “By the way, did I tell you I attended the Red Delicious funeral? No, must have forgotten. Yesterday was so busy. Anyway, there I was, elegant as usual, this time appropriately in all-black, form-fitting, of course, but demur high collar. Sat as far back as possible. And who do you think plopped herself down in the first row, silently crying under a veil, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, also swathed in form-fitting black as is appropriate for a grieving widow-wanna be?”

“The Pink Lady herself,” I said.

“You son-of-a-bitch! How’d you know?”

“Something nearly-estranged half-brother Golden Delicious told me this afternoon. He said the last thing Red said to him was that he was looking for an engagement ring.”

“You bet,” Hermoine confirmed. “After I ran the license plate on the rental, I drove down to Mansfield and went through recent clerk of court filings. And there it was from two weeks back, a marriage license issued to Lady Dana Pinkhouse-Terwillinger and Redmond “Red” Delicious, Ph.D. What else did Golden Delicious disclose?”

“Golden and Mac Intosh, separately. That I’ll tell you after you send a promised ecstatic jolt up my spine. Which, partner, I trust you will do after you tell me who your client—in terms of cash flow, our other client—is in this case.”

“Guess.”

“Jonathan Eppelbaum?”

“One jolt, coming up.”

“Willing to be billed twice. Man, that’s one nervous scientist.”

Later, having shared a crème Brulee dessert—breaking the caramelized crust and fighting over the lone raspberry on top was always the best part—I, or rather Eppelbaum, paid and we took the back exit, so as to escape notice of the real estate agent and his companion. They were still at the bar, their heads together in conversation.

Back at my place, Hermoine noticeably did her best to ignore the bachelor squalor as we made a bee-line to the boudoir, where I was glad I actually had changed the sheets as recently as three days before. Fulfilling her promise of passionate bite and electric jolt to my person, we both fell asleep as much from the night’s activities as the running around during the first day of our investigative undertakings.

***

The next morning after a quick shower and coffee, Hermoine and I stepped out of my place into the driveway where I was about to get into my black three-year-old Toyota Rav 4 SUV.  I’d wanted red but Hermoine had talked me out of it. Ordered me out of it, more precisely. “Black,” she had said flatly. “Your tough guy image, remember?”

“What the hell!” I swore softly. Someone had smashed in the side window. Shards of glass littered the driver’s seat and floor. Also littering the driver’s seat and floor were apple peels. I couldn’t be sure, they were dry and already shriveled, but they might have been Red Delicious peels. More likely Rome, I thought, given the dearth of Red Delicious in local markets. Or even Jonathans. But what the good Almighty damn? Why smash my window to deposit them there? And was that a purple tinge on the peels’ edges?

“Whoa!” Hermione breathed softly. I caught a whiff of my own Irish Spring soap as she leaned in toward me for a closer look.  “Either some Mansfield low-life, looking for something, anything of value to boost his miserable existence for a day or two, or someone wanted to send you a message.”

“And neither of us heard a thing?” I asked.

“We had quite a workout,” she said, “in case you’ve forgotten already. We were probably both asleep. Deeply.”

“No doubt,” I conceded, rubbing a tooth-nipped shoulder. “Regardless, I lean toward the ‘send me a message’ theory. See those purple-tinted apple peels? When they cut it down, Red Delicious’ body was oddly purple. Then there was our waitress at Granny Smith’s, the one with purple fingertips. Now these purple peels. If we’re working together on this …”

“Which we are,” Hermoine asserted.

“Since we’re working together on this, I’d like you to revisit Granny Smith’s today, same time we were in yesterday, and see what you can learn about that waitress. Starting with her fingertips.”

“And what will you be doing, partner?” she asked me.

“Paying a visit to U.S. Premium Apples and its hardnosed operator, Lydia Lotzov, or Lotsoff, whatever.”

“Hardnosed but still attractive, in a middle-aged sort of way,” Hermoine said.

“Don’t worry Babe. I’m a one-woman man,” I said. Shivering a little, either from the morning chill, this increasingly ominous case, or both, she still smiled. “And don’t forget it,” she said, giving me what I decided was meant to be a playful elbow to the ribs.

***

Lydia Lotzov was working at one of those adjustable desks. She had it in vertical mode and stood tapping away on a keyboard. “Apple futures,” she muttered. “Another damned version of the casino. I might as well still be dancing in Vegas.”

Ushered in by a receptionist, I stood in the doorway of Lotzov’s office. Framed, poster-sized color photographs of apples festooned the walls. There were shots of red, green, and yellow fruit, hanging from trees, piled bountifully in bushel baskets, single apples gleaming in closeups, or alluringly rendered as pie. It was enough to make a man long for citrus.

“Sit down, Jonas, sit down,” she said peremptorily, not looking up. “I’ll finish this in a moment.” I sat. Five minutes later, she closed whatever she had been working on, darkened her computer screen, and looked at me.

“Well, what can I do for Apple Creek’s leading male detective?” Humor or sarcasm? I couldn’t tell.

Given what I knew about her, and her semi-retired father, I tried the direct approach. “You can tell me everything you know about Red Delicious, the apple business and apple research in Central Ohio that might have been connected with his murder.”

“Everything? Neither of us has time for that. Why don’t I tell you what I think might have a bearing on the scientist’s demise—so unfortunate for all of us, or most of us, in the apple industry—and you grill me on anything you think I’ve omitted?”

“Fair enough,” I said, pulling out a pen and small notebook I habitually carried in my shirt pocket. Habitually, like the Kevlar T-shirts I habitually wore and Glock G-26 I habitually carried. “Why do you imply that Delicious’ murder was not unfortunate for everyone in the apple business?”

“As you might have heard, Dr. Red Delicious, chief botanist, Ohio State University agricultural research labs, was a proud man. Egocentric, some said. He even could be insufferable, always bringing up that big success extending the shelf-life of cider.”

“Hardly a reason for someone to kill him,” I said, letting pass her failure to use the definite article in referring to The Ohio State University.

“But what if he thought he was on the verge of identifying and eliminating the cause of the long decline in the taste and texture of red delicious apples, and was bruiting it about?”

Bruiting it about? Where had this former Las Vegas chorine gone to school? Not OSU surely. Maybe Kenyon. “Even so,” I said, “why should that get him killed?”

“I’ll let you in on a poorly-kept industrial secret,” Lotzov replied. “The more the apple business consolidates—just like banking, insurance, healthcare, tech, you name it—the greater the pressure to simplify supply chains, reduce product handling, to automate. To cut costs, in short.

“Let me ask you a question,” she said, turning the tables. “When was the last time you were in a supermarket, in the produce section?”

“A couple days ago,” I said, wondering where this was going but wanting to find out.

“Did you see the apple display? What do you remember about it?

“There must have been eight or nine separate bins, with the apples, lots of different colors, arranged neatly in pyramids. And in addition to the general bright grocery store lighting, special spots shone on them, making the apples gleam.”

“And you bought a couple, even though you hadn’t planned to get apples when you entered the store, right?” she asked.

“Right. I picked up three pink ladies, though in summer I go for melons and peaches.”

“Good,” she said. “Now imagine there were instead of six or seven bins, only three. One with red apples, one with green, one with yellow. Your average shopper wouldn’t spend unprofitable time—for her or him and for apple growers and distributors—debating which of too many varieties to buy and how many of each, but would just grab half-a-dozen or more of one color, or maybe two. We’ve already done the research, and that’s how it works most of the time.”

“Maybe I see what you’re getting at,” I hazarded. “Growing, harvesting, transporting, distributing, wholesaling and retailing only three varieties makes the entire process more efficient, more profitable, for everyone along the line.”

“Right,” Lotzov said. “In every McDonald’s in the world, the Big Mac and fries taste the same. But many people, growers and consumers, like the apple business as it is, like the variety it offers and could care less about efficiency and profits so long as the apples they want, that they’ve always been buying, turn up in the stores.”

“And Red Delicious was one of those people. In fact, his professional life was dedicated to preserving and expanding varieties and choices. So, someone murdered him because he stood in the way of ‘progress?’” I asked.

“Maybe,” Lotzov answered.

“Who? Prime suspects, please.”

For the first time since she told me to sit down, this matter-of-fact, even hard woman, smiled. Barely. In what looked like a gold lame’ jump suit, big zipper up the front closed to the neck, wearing black pumps, she swiveled around her desk to face me.

“Please? That’s cute, especially from a cop or private eye.” She was quiet for a moment, thinking. “I can tell you this much,” she resumed. “There are bad vibes in the industry. Vague rumors and unsettling coincidences.”

Right, I thought. Like my SUV’s window being smashed in, like the purple peels. “Such as?”

“There are three conglomerates that control more than two-thirds of all apple distribution in the country, Mr. Jonas. U.S. Premium Apples is more regional. Still, we handle more than a tenth of total distribution. That makes us about fifth in size. A woman who intimated she represented one of the big conglomerates was in my office earlier today. In fact, she left only an hour or so ago. She asked me if I was interested in selling U.S. Premium’s Midwest acreage. I said no, that in fact my father and I were thinking of expanding our West Coast operation, which is smaller than here in the Great Lakes, while holding our Midwest tracts.”

“Then she offered to buy just our Ohio facilities for more than the entire company is worth. She seemed especially keen to get the acreage that happens to abut the OSU ag. research station’s orchards, since we have even more fertile orchards south of Columbus. Something odd, unsettling even, in that. But you could say it looked like an offer I couldn’t afford to refuse. Financially, or—it was left courteously unstated—like Dr. Red Delicious. I told her to come back tomorrow with her banker, lawyer and accountant. They can speak with my banker, lawyer and accountant.”

“What, no real estate agent?” I asked. It was my turn to straddle humor and sarcasm.

Lydia Lotzov looked at me closely. “So, you wouldn’t be surprised if Harley Rudder was with her?”

“No,” I said, “I wouldn’t. Not if her name was Muriel May.”

“Smarter than you look,” she said, showing me to the door. “Hold on a moment, Mr. Jonas. What do you know about this May,” as she grasped my right forearm. Being right-handed, that made me nervous. Having repeatedly practiced at the range going for my Glock with only my left hand, not as nervous as I otherwise would have been.

“Probably no more than you. She’s from out of town, drives a black Mustang rental, and in Apple Creek seems to spend most or all her time with Rudder.”

Lotzov made a feline sound. Not like a house cat purring. More like a tiger in the bush eyeing a gazelle out on the savannah. “Goodbye,” she said, dropping my arm. “Stop by again when you get some new information. I might have some of my own. We could exchange.”

***

Back at my office, I was about to turn the key to unlock the door when I heard, or more precisely felt something closing behind me. I immediately started to crouch and whirl so the beefy arm that meant to encircle my shoulders just knocked off my fedora. Coming up fast I shot my right fist into the jaw of my assailant, who staggered back a few steps.

“Oof!” Harley F. Rudder exhaled raggedly.

“Harley,” I said. “Always good to see you, no matter how unexpected.” Pushing the office door open with my foot, I pulled him in. “Have a seat. I’ll get you something to drink.”

Rudder stood with one hand braced on the back of a guest chair in front of my desk. He looked shaky. His gray slacks were neatly creased, his Italian loafers shined, but his blue blazer was askew and he rubbed his chin where a bruise already was beginning to show.

“Have some water,” I said, handing him a paper cup.

“Don’t want any.” He was beginning to compose himself.

“So, what was that stunt all about?” I demanded.

“Stop the fuck messing with my deal!” he practically shouted.

“What deal?”

“You know what deal!”

I did? The one he was cooking up with May that involved buying out U.S. Premium Apples for a lot more than it was worth? I took his visit as confirmation.

I stared at him, my best poker face in place, eyebrows slightly arched, and waited. That really got him. Now he was raging.

“The biggest deal of my career, potentially the equivalent of an entire year’s sales—a damned good year!—and you, you and that Amazon slut of yours trying to muck it up …”

“Amazon slut?” I asked softly, this time smashing my left fist into his jaw. Now he didn’t stagger back a few steps. Instead, he dropped unconscious to the floor. I offered a silent thanks to the weight machines at the YMCA.

“Honestly,” said my receptionist-secretary-office manager, Susan Smith, 23, yoga instructor, karate black belt, emergency medical technician, and mistress of flex-time, “I never know what I’m going to have to straighten up when I come in here.” She dead-lifted Rudder onto the love seat in the front office, put a little decorative pillow—she also embroidered—under his head and went in search of the first aid kit and smelling salts.

“Shall I call fire and rescue?” she asked.

Shall she call, not should she call. Susan Smith was a find. In her case word-of-mouth had hit the bull’s-eye. Whatever class Jonas & Associates Investigations had, she lent it. So, of course she heartily endorsed Hermione’s looming remodeling. “Give him five minutes,” I said. “If he doesn’t start to come around by then, call.”

Rudder groaned at the three-minute mark, was dizzily awake at five, and alert, angry and wary at ten.

“Harley,” I said with a touch of exasperation, “this time try it like adults, adults in a mostly civilized little burg like Apple Creek. You tell me about Muriel May and the tremendous deal she says she’ll cut you in on, and I’ll tell you—if I can—how to keep your name out of a murder investigation.”

For the first time Rudder looked at me not with contempt or anger but a trace of fear.

“Murder? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I think you know quite well. In any case, you first. May?”

Harley started. It wasn’t much, but maybe everything necessary. May said she represented Century 21/REMAX Realtors’ national headquarters. She worked only the biggest deals. She told Rudder she came to him since he was “the most prominent real estate agent in Richland Country,” a description Harley heartily endorsed. But, she added, they had only forty-eight hours to close the deal before competition attempting to undercut her would descend on Apple Creek like vultures.

“I asked her what competition, since the amalgamated Century 21/REMAX was the biggest national outfit in the country. She would only say, ‘European.’ I asked her what she meant by that but she only shook her head. Shook her head ‘no’ and actually put her finger to her lips like a schoolgirl trying to shush me.”

Susan Smith returned, and handed Rudder a shot glass, the one I’d received as third-highest overall scorer in the Apple Creek Wednesday night men’s bowling league, filled with 16-year-old Glenlivet single malt Scotch. We always kept a bottle handy. For clients, of course.

Rudder tilted his head back slightly, groaned softly, and downed the golden brown liquid in a gulp. His pale cheeks began to regain their ruddy aspect.

“Anyway, she’s a woman in a hurry. Said she was authorized to cut me in for five percent of what certainly would be a multi—she said ‘multi-multi’—million-dollar transaction. All I had to do was represent her buyer locally.”

“Locally but quickly. And very quietly,” I said.

“Right,” Rudder replied, almost evenly.

“And her buyer is?”

“I’m sworn to secrecy until closing.”

“No matter,” I said. “The word’s already out. How could it not be in a place called Apple Creek.”

He rose, only a little unsteadily. “And you’ll keep my name out of the murder investigation?” he asked. He said “the” investigation, not “some.” He knew as well as I that we were talking about Red Delicious.

I pursed my lips and put my forefinger across them.

Rudder glared at me again and left, gripping the rail as he descended the stairs.

“Do you always make friends this easily?” Smith poked me in the ribs the same place Hermoine had.

“Ouch,” I said. “And thanks. You handled our visitor perfectly, from the deadlift to the Scotch.”

“I know,” she replied. “That’s what two years at North Central State Community College and a certificate of completion as Emergency Medical Technician can do for a gal. But Scotch or no, he’s going to have a full-day headache.”

Gal. She actually said gal, like Coleen Gray to Sterling Hayden in the 1956 noir classic The Killing. And only twenty-three. I hoped to have a daughter like that someday. If Hermione turned out to be her mother, I might.

***

My cell phone buzzed. It was Hermione. “I’m at the police station. Come join me. We have to file a report about your break-in.”

“We do?” I wondered. The less the police knew about my business, the better. Detective Handbook Rule Four, Section B.

“Yes, we do. You’ll need it to file your insurance claim. In case you didn’t notice, whoever shattered your window also smashed your headlights and taillights.”

“I noticed,” said, a half-truth. After seeing the headlights, I had been too furious to bother looking at the back.

“The repair, window and lights, will probably cost you around $2,000,” Hermoine estimated. “What’s your deductible?”

“$300, I think.”

“So, filing the report’ll save you up to $1,700. Get over here. And while you’re doing the paperwork, maybe I can learn something.”

After I’d handed a clerk the completed form, Chief Thomas Thompson II called us into his office. “Thomas Thompson II, not Tommy Thompson, Jr.,” he had reminded The Apple Creek Weekly Gazette, Mansfield News-Journal and WMAN AM and FM, “the Voice of Richland County” more than once. Not that the hardened newshounds paid much attention.

“Apple Creek’s illustrious paired detectives,” Thompson snorted. “Playing at police work. Well, why do you suppose someone smashed up your three-year-old Toyota and left dried apple peels in it?” Judging by the bizarre twist of his mouth, the chief couldn’t decide whether to smirk, sneer or laugh out loud.
I did not suffer fools lightly, but sometimes Hermione didn’t suffer them at all. This was one of those times. “Not just dried apple peels, eagle eyes. Purple ones. Like Dr. Red Delicious’ body when your people cut it down. Like the fingertip of Sarah Wong, until yesterday waitress and cashier at Granny Smith’s Pie Hole, now apparently missing. See any connection there, Chief?”

“Missing?” As was too often the case, our chief of police was not au courant.

“Since yesterday,” Hermione stated, managing to imply in two neutral words that the chief was a total incompetent. This was one of those not-infrequent times I felt content to let her do the talking.

“What’s Wong got to do with it?” Thomas Thompson II asked.

“Don’t know, yet,” Hermoine answered. “Why don’t we all play at police work and see who figures it out first?”

The chief stared at her, stone-faced. Then he looked at me, still stone-faced. Finally, he cracked a smile. “How do you put up with her?” he asked me, having decided to pretend to be amused. “It isn’t easy,” I said, “but there are compensations.”

***

Saturday morning, I got myself to the Apple Creek Public Library—motto this week on the electronic marquee: “The Universe in Books. And CDs. And Videos. Air conditioning repaired!”—just before 10. A crowd already milled about, sipping coffee, and forking pieces of Granny Smith’s apple pie.

“Jimmy just loved the last installment of When Your Alphabet Soup Spells Murder,” one young mother was telling another. “He goes nearly hysterical trying to figure which kid gets knocked off next.”

“My Spencer—she’s three years older than Jimmy, if I remember right—adores the Dick and Jane Get Busted series. I know when she’s reading it by the laughter coming from her bedroom,” the second responded.

Must be the yoga pants, I thought. A little too tight, they probably choke off circulation. Whatever, I found a seat and finished my slice of pie and cup of coffee. Why did the same coffee never taste quite as good out of a paper cup as it did out of a proper china one? Why did this coffee taste like someone dumped a couple of packets of Splenda—which I never used—into it?

China. The missing Wong waitress. I only could hope Hermoine would be successful. She was risking a lot, but we couldn’t miss such an opportunity, not with Granny Smith’s Pie Hole uncharacteristically closed on a Saturday morning to accommodate its proprietress’ appearance at the library.

I fell back into wondering for the umpteenth time about the differing taste of coffee from the same pot depending on how it was served. Like scotch out of a plastic cup instead of a glass tumbler. Like sex at Motel 6 versus the Ritz-Carlton. Like, never mind. Something about ambience, surroundings.

The head librarian, Marian Mansfield, interrupted my intellectual thought experiment. Her family had settled in Richland County around the time of the Civil War. Members of it, including in this generation of Marian, her brother Mike, and their uncle Mycroft had never left. The librarian was introducing Granny Smith.

“We all know Granny Smith,” Marian Mansfield said warmly. “Though relatively new in Apple Creek, not only does she own and operate one of our favorite downtown establishments, the wonderful Granny Smith’s Pie Hole, but she also is a prolific and gifted author,” the librarian gushed. “And that’s why we’re privileged to be here this morning, to hear Granny read from new installments of her beloved series, When Your Alphabet Soup Spells … oh, I just can’t say the word,” she hesitated, as audience members laughed indulgently, “and When Dick and Jane Get Busted! Granny, the microphone is yours …”

When the applause finally died away, Granny Smith began reading in that husky voice so familiar to Apple Creek residents. “‘Mother,’ little Patrice begged, “please let me stir the pot. I like to see what the letters spell out as the soup stops swirling. Please—”

“‘Oh, Patrice,’ her mother said, ‘I’ve told you before about those letters. Don’t let your imagination run away with you…”

Was my own imagination running away with me? As the morning wore on, the reading sounded more and more like distant droning. I found it increasingly hard to keep my eyes open.  I pried myself out of my chair and stumbled back to the office.

“What’s wrong with him!” Hermoine shrieked.

“I don’t know!” Susan Smith exclaimed. “This is how I found him when I came in, just a couple minutes ago. I thought I would see how the remodeling was going with no one around on a Saturday.”

“And he was slumped in his chair behind the desk like that, eyes half-closed, mumbling?”

“Just like this. I threw some water on his face and started massaging his palms and forearms. The mumbling got a little louder, but still not understandable. And look, his fingertips are purple…”

“Call Dr. Eppelbaum!” Hermoine ordered. “Tell him to get over here right away, that Jason’s semi-conscious and his fingertips have turned purple.” With that, she hip-butted Smith aside and, she told me later, began alternately slapping me on the cheeks and pulling on my ears.

I was awake but having difficulty taking deep breaths when Eppelbaum arrived. He popped open a big, hard-framed briefcase. Rummaging through it, he pulled out a cork-stoppered vial and three surgical masks. He put one on and handed the other two to Hermione and Susan.

“Put these on,” he instructed them. Then he shook some greenish-colored powder out of the vial onto a sheet of paper. Putting the paper under my nose, he ordered, “Breathe in, as deeply as you can.”

I tried.

“Deeper!” he insisted. “Again!”

I did a little better the second time. Dr. Eppelbaum sprinkled a little more of the powder onto the paper. “One more time, deeply as possible!”

Five minutes passed, or maybe half an hour, I was unable to tell. But eventually I was breathing normally again and the purple tinge to my fingertips—and, according to Dr. Eppelbaum, my toes—had receded almost completely.

“Hey!” I half shouted, half gasped, “where are my loafers?”

“How do you feel now?” Eppelbaum asked, kicking my shoes toward me.

“Almost normal,” I replied. “A little shaken, but definitely not stirred. What the hell happened? And what was that stuff you had me breathe?”

“I’m not positive,” the botanist said, “but thanks to the computer-enhanced microscope we received only last week—the last requisition Red Delicious ever made—I can surmise.  You were poisoned with East Asian Apple Fungus. Some version never seen before, as far as I know, but certainly never seen outside East Asia. Apparently, bio-engineered for gain-of-function.”

“What exactly are you talking about?” I demanded.

“Gain-of-function research tries to find underlying causes of possible diseases or pandemics but often does so by actually increasing the harmfulness of the pathogen that is being examined.  Like the Covid-19 virus China’s Wuhan virology lab most likely unleashed on the rest of the world. We know Red’s body was purple when it was found. Hermione told me about the waitress with the purple finger tips. And that you found, and touched, purple apple peels after your car had been vandalized. East Asian Apple Fungus leaves a distinctive purplish tone to infected fruit. If not caught early, it kills not only the fruit but also the tree. However,” and here Dr. Eppelbaum paused and wiped perspiration from his forehead, “it has never been known to cross into mammals before. Just in case, with a little experimentation, I already have devised what I think is a useful anti-fungal for East Asian Apple Fungus. The main ingredients are common enough—menthol, wormwood, camphor and calendula.”

“Absorbine Jr.!” Susan exclaimed.

“You are correct, young lady,” Eppelbaum said. “Commonly used in the 1950s and ’60s to treat athlete’s foot—a fungal infection—now advertised as a natural joint and muscle pain reliever. But I didn’t have time to render them and the secondary ingredients into a liquid. Hence my rather crude powder…”

“Let me get this straight, Doctor Eppelbaum. You’re telling me I was poisoned with a plant fungus, souped up by humans in East Asia—let’s just come out and postulate China—by the same person or person who murdered Red Delicious?”

“Could be,” the botanist said, his voice now shaky.

“The waitress had purple fingertips. And now Wong’s gone?”

“Wong?” Eppelbaum asked, confused.

“Gone,” Hermoine replied to my query. “But I don’t think long. Let me tell you what I found at Granny Smith’s while you were listening to Granny Smith. There’s a little office behind the counter, just off the kitchen. I turned on her desk computer and starting going through the files. Fortunately, not password protected. At first, nothing but routine business items—wholesale grocery purchases, employee payroll entries, utility payments and tax information. But at the bottom of the file I saw a notation in parentheses. ‘See additional,’ it said.

“I couldn’t find anything that seemed relevant on the computer itself, so I started going through the desk drawers. Bingo! In the locked drawer—I used the old nail file trick—I found a thumb drive.” Triumphantly, she held up a blue plastic USB drive. It was about two inches long and had the brand name Verbatim imprinted on it.

I looked askance at her. “When she sees it’s missing, she’ll realize something’s up. We don’t want her spooked,” I said.

“She won’t see it’s missing,” Hermoine interrupted me. “I copied everything on this thumb drive onto a blank and left it to substitute for this original.”

“You just happened to have an identical two-inch long, blue Verbatim USB drive with you?” I asked. It was more of a challenge.

Hermoine loved challenges. “Of course. I always carry a plastic sandwich bag full of blanks in my purse, various brands and colors. Staples stocks lots of them.” It was her turn to look at me, eyebrows arched.

“Well done, Brainiac,” I said, “‘fortune favors the prepared mind.’ Louis Pasteur, I believe. So, what’s on it?”

“I thought you’d never ask, Professor Jonas. What’s on it that interests us, and will interest Chief Thompson, though I’m loath to assist that bullheaded dim-wit, are Granny Smith’s actual employment records. To wit, Sarah Wong’s real name is—or rather, I suspect, was—Wong Xi Jin. Born in Beijing 31 years ago, U.S. Social Security number 281-55-5121, though that’s probably fraudulent. And get this: remember the blue blazer with gold trim we saw her wearing? Not the latest fashion statement in north-central Ohio, that’s for sure.  But DuckDuckGo says it’s part of an ensign’s dress uniform in the People’s Liberation Army Navy.”

“Why don’t they just say ‘People’s Liberation Navy?’ I hate those awkward combinations. Anyway, why do you refer to Wong in past tense,” I asked.

“And why DuckDuckGo but not Google?” Susan wanted to know.

“Because, after copying the thumb drive, I made a quick inspection of the premises. In a recycling bin in the kitchen I found boxes labeled ‘Eat First Number One Bakery, 610 E. Long Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215.’ Thank goodness Granny S. doesn’t recycle. Anyway, Granny Smith it seems, does not bake her famous pies. She buys them from a Chinese bakery wholesaler in Columbus. And,” she paused for dramatic effect, “turns out there is a basement under ye olde pie shoppe.”

“Granny’s patrons are going to demand refunds when they find out her pies aren’t homemade as claimed,” I interrupted.

Hermoine, Susan and Dr. Eppelbaum all glared at my irrelevant two-cents-worth.

It was Susan who spoke. “What about the basement?”

“It seems there’s a newly-dug trench about six feet long and two feet wide. I believe that’s where we will find Sarah Wong, or rather Wong Xi Jin.”

There was a thud as Dr. Eppelbaum fainted, crumbling into something like the fetal position onto my office floor. At least he’d stopped sweating.

“What else was on the thumb drive?” Susan wanted to know. This young woman would make a great detective if she ever tired of the EMT thing.

“Before Wong Xi Jin, there had been Linda Low, real name apparently Nancy Kwan Kung. Born 33 years ago in Shanghai. Social Security number 281-55-4321….”

“Wait a minute.” It was my turn. “That’s the same first five digits as Wong’s Social Security number. Someone back on the mainland is planting these people here. But why, and why eliminate Wong?”

“My guess is that whoever placed Sarah and Linda, or rather Wong and Kwan here was using Granny Smith’s as a front. But maybe, after Red Delicious’ murder, Granny got antsy,” Hermoine said. “And,” she said, turning to Susan, who was ministering to Eppelbaum on the floor, “DuckDuckGo does not track your online searches like Google does.”

Stooped over Dr. Eppelbaum, using a cold compress and holding a little green bottle under his nose to bring him around, Susan said, without looking up at us, “When Wong no longer reports in, whoever sent her is going to get curious, and Granny Smith will become even more antsy. That doesn’t give us much time.”

Us? I could already see the new name in black-edged gold letters on the frosted glass of my office door: “Schultz, Smith and Jonas, Detectives.” Trapped by talent. All sorts of talent.

Dr. Eppelbaum groaned. He would live to see another day. Though it hit me that beyond that, none of us could be sure. “Wait another minute,” I said. “What if Wong and Kwan’s handlers weren’t thousands of miles from here in China, but at the Eat First Number One Bakery 66 miles down I-71 in Columbus?

“And another minute,” I said, starting to sweat a little myself, “what’s that little green bottle you were holding under Eppelbaum’s nose?”

“Absorbine Jr.,” Susan replied. “I always carry it in my EMT bag. I’m also a by-appointment physical trainer. This stuff is useful in oh so many ways.”

I’ll bet, I thought.

***

Sunday was an odd day. Nothing happened. The surveillance of Granny Smith’s Pie-Hole that we began Saturday afternoon revealed nothing unusual. Hermoine, Susan and I watched the place in rotating eight-hour shifts. Except for Granny closing up early after returning from the library, nobody and no body went in or out. Early Monday I had Susan use one of my burner cell phones to call the police department.

“Police?” she said in a girlish voice.

“Yes. Can we help you?

“Get a warrant and search Granny Smith’s Pie-Hole. A body’s buried in the basement.”

“What!?”

“The missing waitress. She was murdered.” Click.

Susan handed the burner phone back to me. I took a large hammer from the tool box in my storage closet and smashed it to pieces. Then I swept up the pieces, bagged them and went downstairs to put the bag into my SUV. I would toss the bag into the trash at home. Tomorrow was collection day and that would be the end of these tiny pieces of potential evidence.

Granny’s opened as usual at 7 a.m. that Monday. The Richland County Courthouse did not start business until 9 a.m., and Common Pleas Court Presiding Judge Jay Greenfield, whose long relationship with Chief Thompson was anything but cordial, could not be persuaded to sign a search warrant until nearly 10. So, it was not until roughly 10:30 a.m. that we watched two squad cars roll up to Granny Smith’s. The second disgorged none other than the Chief himself. About 15 minutes later an ambulance, a fire engine and another police SUV pulled up. Plus, press cars from the Mansfield News-Journal; Apple Creek Weekly-Gazette; WMAN AM and FM, still “the Voice of Richland County;” and WFMD-TV, “Your Go-To Source for News, Sports and Weather in Central Ohio.” Before noon a stretcher bearing a sheet-covered corpse was being wheeled to the ambulance, and Chief Thomas Thompson II was escorting a handcuffed Granny Smith to a police cruiser. Slowly, to benefit the cameras and microphones.

***

Hermione and I cornered Harley F. Rudder at the La Paloma bar around 5:30 p.m. Monday. Muriel May was nowhere to be seen. Rudder grimaced when he saw us.

“What the hell do you two want?”

“Harley,” I said evenly, “remember when I said I would keep your name out of a murder investigation, if I could?” The grimace became a glare.

“Yeah, and you’d better keep your promise,” he said, slugging down a good bit of his  martini.

“Well, we thought you should know it’s now two murder investigations. And we’ll still try to keep you out of it, provided you talk to us. Now,” I said. We slid onto the barstools on either side of Rudder.

“Two murders?” Rudder did not look well, even after finishing the drink.

“Where’s May?” Hermione asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Rudder replied. If a man could come across as both angry and defeated simultaneously, trying but failing to put up a bulldog front, it was our local real estate baron sitting on that barstool.

“She might be key to two killings,” I said. “Red Delicious, and now Sarah Wong, the formerly missing waitress at Granny Smith’s, now residing at the county morgue under her real name, Wong Xi Jin. Ever wonder what Muriel May’s real name might be?”

The usually ruddy-faced Rudder was pale now, definitely. Sweat stood out on his upper lip in the manner of Richard Nixon at a press conference. “You’ll keep my name quiet, even from my wife?” Rudder’s question was more of a plea.

“If we can,” I said.

“Yes,” Hermoine cut in. “We can, and we will.” Rudder looked at me, at her, then made up his mind.

“Okay. I think I know what her real name is. It was like this: She called me at my office around three, three-thirty in the afternoon the first day she came to town. We’d already had breakfast at Granny Smith’s—she told me then that via Century 21/REMAX she represented a big tech firm, wouldn’t say then which one—that wanted to buy not only the farm next to the Agricultural Research Station but also the station itself. Said her client needed, in fact ‘absolutely, positively had to have,’ those were her words, a huge land tract for the biggest data processing center Ohio had yet seen—bigger than the $8 billion worth of property Google’s already bought up around Columbus—and would pay above-market price, meaning a commission for me bigger than anything I’d ever dreamed of.

“Well, on the phone she told me—she didn’t really ask, it was more of an order—to meet her at her hotel, that she had important information from her client to relay. Information she couldn’t discuss on the phone. This whole thing was beginning to sound really strange, even bogus to me, her thinking the Ag Station could be purchased, let alone in a straight real estate deal, without approval by the university and probably the legislature itself and over the nearly certain opposition of environmentalists from everywhere but maybe Youngstown. Tricky and time-consuming. And it was clear she was in an ungodly hurry and could spend an incredible amount of money. But I went, against my better judgment. I was drooling over the potentially biggest profit in my career, I admit it.

“At the front desk I buzzed her hotel room. I expected to meet her in the bar, have a drink, listen to her ‘important information.’ Instead, she says, ‘Come on up. It’s room 310. Knock twice, wait, then knock once more.’ What the hell is this, I wondered? Knock three times, like Tony Orlando and Dawn? Well, I go up, knock as instructed, and she throws the door open. Except for high heels and a golden chocker necklace, she’s naked as a jay-bird.”

Rudder stopped, looked at his hands, then tossed down his second martini.

I signaled the bartender for third. Rudder picked it up, but just sipping now.

“The next hour was a blur. No to embarrass Ms. Schultz here,” Rudder said, nodding toward Hermione, the ‘Amazon slut’ on whose behalf I’d previously knocked him unconscious, “but this Muriel May was insatiable. And athletic. Or maybe energetic, overly energetic … ecstatically energetic. Hard to describe exactly, but I certainly had never experienced anything like that. She was shapely, well-muscled, and I would say driven in an almost bizarre way. She writhed. She sweated. And she moaned. Faster and faster. You talk about the point where pleasure and pain merge? That was it. She moaned in waves, finally exclaimed something that sounded like Chinese, and fell asleep.

“You can believe me or not, but I was quite disturbed, not so much by what I had done but by her acrobatics, her, I don’t know, practically out-of-body explosiveness, that when I looked around the room and saw her pursue lying open, I went through it. I could tell by her breathing she was in a deep sleep. Maybe a coma for all I knew.

“Anyway, there were two wallets in the purse, two separate driver’s licenses, sets of credit cards, business cards and other I.D. Muriel May is also Win Rei Mai, Chief Operating Officer, Number One Cybersecurity and Protective Agency. By the time she came to, I was dressed and sitting in a chair by the bed, smoking a cigarette. I haven’t smoked in half-a-dozen years, but still carry a pack. Just in case. This definitely was ‘just-in-case’ time,” he said, running a hand over his chin in what I took to be a rueful gesture.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Win Rei Mai’s second business cards said the Number One Cybersecurity Agency is located at or near 610 East Long Street, Columbus, 43215.”

Rudder looked at me with something like respect. “612 East Long Street,” he said. Hermoine put a hand on his shoulder and, leaning closely, whispered, “Your wife doesn’t need to know.”

***

Back in my black Toyota RAV 4 SUV—Hermoine’s choice, as I’ve mentioned, but with oversized tires and chromed cut-out wheels, my choice, I feel compelled to add—I said, “I think we’ve got another stop to make right now.”

“Where?” Hermoine asked.

“U.S. Premium Apples. If we’re in time, we can quash the real estate takeover behind these murders before the signatures are dry.”

There it was, almost too good to be true, as we drove into the parking lot next to U.S. Premium Apples’ headquarters: a black Ford Mustang GT with Florida plates. It was Muriel May’s, or Win Rei Mai’s if you please, rental. Next to the Mustang was Harley F. Rudder’s teal Cadillac Escalade.

“Win Rei Mai-Muriel May is here with her ‘accountant,’ ‘banker,’ and ‘lawyer.’” I said to Hermoine. “Call Susan and tell her put on a protective vest, get here fast and bring the .380. We’re going to need back-up. On her way, she should call police.”

“She can back us up?” Hermoine asked, doubting.

“Susan told me she spends an hour a week at the range. Calls it her hobby,” I replied.

Weapons in hand, Hermoine picking the knob-set lock, we quietly opened the door to U.S. Premium Apples’ front office. The receptionist, wrists and ankles zip-tied, masking tape over her mouth, lay under a desk. Next to her, similarly trussed, was Harley Rudder.

I kicked in the conference room door and pointed my Glock at Win/May, who was sitting across the table from Lotzov. Lotzov held a pen, her hand hovering over a sheet of paper. Lotzov’s accountant, banker and lawyer sat back-to-back in their wheeled conference room chairs, roped together. Each of Win-May’s three associates were standing, armed with large automatic pistols. One covered Lotzov’s partners, another pointed his weapon at Lotzov herself and the third stood guard next to his boss.

“Drop ‘em!” I shouted. Just like in the movies, I thought later.

Hermoine fired as Win guard turned toward us, bringing his weapon up. He fell backward across the conference table. I pulled the trigger as the man covering Lotzov’s associates swung in our direction. Hit in his gun arm, he dropped his pistol. The third man, who had been aiming at Lotzov, let fall his weapon and threw up his hands just as Susan Smith burst in, gripping the .380 Smith & Wesson I kept in the office as a back-up.

“Oh, I was hoping for some of the fun,” she said in mock disappointment—at least I thought it was mock disappointment—as she swung the gun around like someone a little nonchalant about firearm safety. As soon as I could, I extracted the weapon from her eager hands and made a mental note to schedule that girl a safety review at her next range time.

Sirens could be heard in the distance. Hermoine had Win-May spread-eagled against a wall and was searching her, rather roughly I thought. Maybe a woman-to-woman thing.

“This one won’t need an ambulance,” Susan was saying, checking the man sprawled across the conference table for a pulse. His blood spattered the contract Lynne Lotzov had not signed. “He’s quite dead.”

“You know,” Chief Thomas Thompson II said, as his officers finished hand-cuffing the living suspects, their recently deceased associate already having been removed, “something funny when we booked Granny Smith on accessory to murder charges: Turns out she is a he.”

“Of course,” said Hermoine. “I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me before.”

“What?” I asked. “The angular jaw or the peculiarly deep voice?”

“Neither. Just this: no woman ever would name her coffee shop ‘pie-hole.’ That’s strictly vulgar male jargon.”

“Wong,” I said, unable for the moment to think of vulgar male jargon. “What was the cause of death?”

“Coroner Adams, after talking with Dr. Eppelbaum, has ruled East Asian Apple Fungus. Whatever the hell that is. And strangulation,” the chief said.

“Just like Red Delicious,” Hermione replied. “That would be the handiwork of the energetically athletic Muriel May, more pertinently Win Rei Mai, making sure. Her land-hungry data center clients—she implied Apple but more likely Beijing’s Ministry of State Security—were not inclined to let anything or anyone obstruct them.”

“I think you’re right about the real potential buyer being one of China’s intelligence agencies,” I said, “but wrong about Win/May. I don’t think she murdered anyone. But Wong, probably trained by Win, is the one who killed Red Delicious. Wong—energetic all right but green and careless, breaking into the Ag. Station’s orchards at night, contaminating the trees—and caught by Red, so she killed him—also contaminated herself. As she was fading away, Granny Smith recognized the East Asian Apple Fungus symptoms. She couldn’t risk exposure by Wong lingering long enough to mumble something implicating her or others, let alone seek treatment for the waitress. So, she administered the coup de grace by strangulation.”

“What will Win go to prison for, then?” asked Susan.

“Espionage,” I said, “and her sentence will be a long one. This is Ohio, not California. But length of sentence won’t mean much. Unless I miss my guess, Beijing will not take long before it trades a couple of the American citizens it always keeps stored in its dungeons as potential exchange items for her.”

***

A week later, we were standing in the newly-remodeled offices of Jonas, Schultz and Smith, Detective Agency. Susan had decided to take up P.I. worked faster than I could have hoped for. Hermoine pointed to new black-and-gold lettering on the frosted glass of the office front door. She was saying to me, “You’re still first, darling. We went reverse chronologically, oldest first.”

“Thanks,” I said unenthusiastically. “The upgrade was necessary, I admit it,” I said. “But did we overdo it? The wood paneling and recessed lighting make me think of a law office more than a detective agency.”

“Would you rather charge law office fees or detective agency rates?”

“You’ve got me there,” I conceded.

“And here too,” she said. “Put this on.” She handed me a bomber jacket, dark brown leather, knitted cuffs and a collar one could turn up against the wind. She gave me a close inspection.  “Good, it fits.” Walking to the coat tree near the door, she lifted my old trench coat and balled it up. “This goes to the Salvation Army,” she said.

“But …” I started.

“No buts,” she said. “Don’t forget, WFMD-TV is coming in half-an-hour to interview you on how we cracked the case,” she added, emphasizing we. “You want to look your best. Even though they’ve agreed to video you from the back. Publicity yes, visibility no. We have a brand to build now.”

“That’s right,” said Susan. “And your old website is totally lame. I can make it three times better with a simple, inexpensive Word Press upgrade, which, you’ll be happy to know, I’m doing right now.”

“Well,” I said, adopting an unwarranted tone of superiority, “let me inform you that the three of us have been invited to Washington next week to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection. The subcommittee chairman happens to be our very own congressman, C. Delbert deVane. Seems we didn’t just solve the ‘who-killed-Red Delicious’ case, but also broke up a key Chinese Communist espionage ring. The chairman wants to ask us about it. In front of television cameras, of course.”

“Wonderful!” Hermione and Susan exclaimed in unison. “But,” Hermione added, “the committee has to agree to blur our faces and alter our voices. One more time: publicity yes, visibility no. We’re detectives, after all.”

“But someone will have to watch the store while we bask in our fifteen minutes of fame,” I said. “We need to hire a fourth person in any case, sort of a receptionist-administrative assistant and, when necessary, muscle back-up. Especially since I’ve already fielded calls about expanding to Mansfield. We’ll need someone reliable, smart enough without being overly imaginative. Sort of like Lee Patrick’s Effie to Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon.”

“There you go again with the Maltese Falcon stuff,” Hermione scoffed.

“I’ve got just the candidate,” Susan said. “If you don’t mind tattoos down one arm and a little, tiny really, diamond stud in one ear.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Tommy Thompson III,” she said. “He took the EMT course with me at North Central. I aced it, but he did manage a ‘B.’”

“The chief’s son?” I asked. That would be a delicious little turnabout.

“Yes, but he doesn’t throw that around. In fact, he’d like to work where he could have a little distance between himself and his father.”

“Any other tattoos?” Hermoine inquired.

Susan just blushed.

 

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