"I guess," she said. "The other thing is, it's not really Appleseed."
"Oh?" I said. "Do tell."
"Velez says he needs more time to work on it, but it looks as though it's Appleseed's money that's making the purchases, but the title to the land is actually put in the name of a thing called Appleseed Holdings, not Appleseed Baby Foods. It's a whole different company, a partnership with two partners."
"And the partners are . . . ?"
"That's the good part," Lydia said. "Mark Sanderson owns forty percent. The other sixty is in the name of Frank Grice."
Lydia looked at me for a moment, then laughed. "Boy," she said, "that's an expression I don't see on you very often. I'll have to tell Velez."
"Son of a bitch," I said. I dropped the cigarette, crushed it underfoot. "Are you real busy right now?"
"I could probably make some time. What did you have in mind?"
"How about we go see Mark Sanderson?"
"Sounds lovely."
We left her car in the condo lot, rode to Appleseed in mine. In the car, Lydia went on. "Velez says to tell you Sanderson's wife disappeared about four years ago."
"I knew that. Did Velez find her?"
"No, and he looked. Her credit cards haven't been used since the day she left. Her social security number hasn't either. There were no unusual withdrawals from their joint bank accounts in the couple of months before she left. Since then all the activity has been Sanderson's." She added, "She supposedly ran away with some guy, but Velez couldn't find anyone."
I nodded. "MacGregor said she had a reputation. He said everyone but Sanderson knew it." We passed the state college campus, turned onto the spur road to the Appleseed plant. "Were her credit cards canceled?"
"Lena Sanderson's? They weren't renewed when they expired, but they weren't canceled. She could have gone on using them for a couple of months."
"Except that would have made her easier to find."
"She must have really wanted to stay lost."
"You don't know Sanderson. It's a natural reaction."
Mark Sanderson didn't keep us waiting long this time. We didn't even have time to sit and enjoy the vegetables.
As soon as the secretary's beautiful voice announced us, the door to Sanderson's office flew wide and Sanderson filled the opening.
"Where is she?" he demanded.
"Ask your partner," I said, pushing past him into the corner office, where the windows offered two different views of the same sullen sky. Lydia followed me, looked Sanderson over. He shot her one glance and then ignored her.
"What the hell are you talking about?" he barked. "Where's Ginny? That Antonelli punk, his brother was shot last night. What the hell is going on? Where's my daughter?"
"Why didn't you tell me you were still doing business with Frank Grice?"
He stopped dead, his eyes fixed on me as though I'd suddenly mutated into a form of life he'd never seen before. He looked at Lydia again. "Who the hell is this?"
"Lydia Chin," I said. "Lydia, this is Mark Sanderson." Lydia put out her hand. Sanderson didn't move. Lydia shrugged. "Lydia and I are business associates," I told him. "Like you and Grice."
"Smith," he pushed through his teeth, "it's none of your fucking business, but if you mean Appleseed Holdings, that's a completely legitimate operation."
"Yeah," I said. "Seems to be, so far. What I really want to know is why you didn't tell me about it."
"Because it was none of your fucking business!" he said again. "It has nothing to do with my daughter, who is the only reason I let a man like you into my office at all!"
"How about a man like Grice?"
Sanderson forced the muscles in his jaw to relax. He walked around behind his desk, sat down. "Appleseed Holdings is a profit-making venture. Sometimes business decisions get you involved with people you’d otherwise rather not be involved with."
"Profit-making for whom? The money that goes into it is Appleseed's. Yours. But Grice owns a bigger share than you do."
Sanderson smiled a hard, cold smile. "For us both."
"But not yet?"
"No," his smile widened, then flicked off. "Not yet."
"Uh-huh. That's what I thought."
Lydia lifted her eyebrows, waited to be enlightened.
"The gas pipeline," I said to her, but with my eyes on Sanderson. "I'll bet I could map the properties he's bought. North to south down the county, mostly in the valley. When NYSEG starts buying up land for the pipeline, they'll have to come to him. What if it doesn't happen, Sanderson?"
Sanderson practically laughed at me. "It'll happen. You forget," he said. "I have friends who tell me things."
"But I thought they condemned land for things like that," Lydia said. "So you couldn't speculate that way."
Sanderson looked at her as he might at a retarded child with whom he was forced to deal. "They do. But they have to pay a fair market price. And this is very, very productive land. We lease it to Appleseed Baby Foods at very good terms. Appleseed—Appleseed Baby Foods—is making huge profits on the crops we grow on this land."
"Because you pay chickenshit to the people who grow them, the people who used to own that land," I said.
He shook his head. "Doesn't matter why. Profit is profit." "And what about Grice?" "What about him?"
"I could understand if there were strong-arm work involved. But I haven't heard that. People are falling all over themselves to sell their farms to you. So how come you're willing to invest in Grice's future?"
"Smith, let me tell you again: this is none of your business. My daughter's safety should be concerning you. It should be keeping you up nights. Because if anything’s happened to Ginny-" He stopped as the earrings from my pocket skidded, jingling, across his desk. He looked up. "What's this?" "Hers?" Sanderson glanced at them. "No. They're too flashy for her” "Christ, Sanderson, you're a case." I picked up the photograph from his desk, passed it to Lydia, who as usual, was leaning by the window. She studied it, handed it back to me. I offered it to Sanderson. The spun gold of Ginny's hair and the tilt of her head combined to hide all but the tip of one earring, but the amethyst bauble was unmistakable.
He paled, picked up one earring between finger and thumb. He said, "Where did you get them?"
"You really didn't recognize them? That picture's right under your nose every day, Sanderson." He scowled.
"Sanderson," I said, "there's a lot you don’t know, and a lot I don't know. Let's fill each other in." I sat, put a match to a cigarette. Then I had to get up and retrieve the ashtray, as I had two days before. "Your daughter," I told him, "met Jimmy Antonelli in a bar sometime last month." At the word bar his eyes flashed and he started to say something, but I went on. "It was Grice who told you they were seeing each other, wasn't it? You're a pawn, Sanderson. Grice couldn't talk me into finding Jimmy for him, so he thought maybe you could. By the way, did he tell you he owns the bar where they met?"
He didn't answer, but the look in his iron eyes told me I wouldn't have liked anything he'd said anyway.
I went on: "Ginny dropped Jimmy about a week ago. She told him she'd met someone else. Someone tougher than he was, she said. There are probably a lot of men in this county tougher than Jimmy, but I found those earrings in Frank Grice's apartment."
Suddenly a pencil broke in Sanderson's grip. He looked at the yellow splinters, then at me. "This is crap!"
"There's more. Last Friday someone broke into a house near Central Bridge and stole some valuable things. Your daughter has been fencing those things."
"What the hell are you trying—"
"There's at least one witness who can identify her, and if I have to I'll find more. But here's where what you want and what I want may come together. The stuff from that burglary that's already been sold we'll forget about. But there was a crate with some paintings in it. Six of them. They haven't surfaced yet. The police don't know about this. If I get the paintings back, they never will."