The Body in the Gazebo

T
HE
B
ODY
IN THE
G
AZEBO

A Faith Fairchild Mystery

Katherine Hall Page

Dedication

For my dear husband, Alan

Happy 35th Anniversary

Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to the possibilities; Truth isn’t.

—M
ARK
T
WAIN
,
Pudd’nhead Wilson

Contents

Chapter 1

T
he first letter arrived on a Tuesday. Ursula Rowe had no need to read the brittle, yellowed newspaper clippings that were enclosed. She knew what they said. But the few words on the single sheet of white stationery in the envelope were new. New and succinct:

Are you sure you were right?

She went upstairs to her bedroom—hers alone for too many years—and sat down on the antique four-poster bed they’d bought when, newly married, they’d moved into this house. The bed had pineapples carved on the finials—symbols of hospitality. She reached up and traced the intricately carved wood with her fingers. Pineapples. A great luxury for those early colonists—her long-ago ancestors. How had such exotic fruit made its way to New England? She’d never considered this before. Wouldn’t they have rotted in the hold of a ship on the voyage from South America? Perhaps the pineapples came from the Southern colonies. That must have been it.

Her mind was wandering. No, her mind was trying to take her away from what was clutched in her other hand. The letter. She closed her eyes. Arnold had joked that the pineapples were fertility symbols. Certainly the bed had borne fruit—two children—and been the site of years of pleasure. He had been gone for such a long time, but she could still recall his touch, his whispered endearments, the passion. She’d never wanted anyone else.

Ursula read the words again—a single sentence written in a shaky hand. You couldn’t duplicate it; it came only with age. So, the writer was old. She looked at her own hand. The raised blue veins were so close to the surface of her powdery, thin skin that it seemed they would burst through. Her fingers, once long and straight, were knobbed and for some years she’d removed all her rings except her wedding band, worn thin. An old woman’s hands. The change had come so gradually—the brown spots first appearing as summer freckles to her mind—that even now she could scarcely believe her age. She loosened her grip and put everything back in the envelope, tucking the flap in securely.

Where could she hide it? It wouldn’t do to have her daughter come across it. Not that Pix was nosy, but she sometimes put Ursula’s wash away, so the Sheraton chest of drawers was out. And the blanket chest at the foot of the bed that had been her grandmother’s was out, too. Pix regularly aired the contents. There wasn’t much furniture in the room. Some years after Arnold died, Ursula had removed his marble-topped nightstand—the repository of books, eyeglasses, reading lamp, alarm clock, and eventually pill bottles—replacing it with a chaise and small candlestick table, angled into the room. It felt wrong to get into bed during the day, but she’d wanted a place to stretch out to read and, increasingly, to nap. Somehow the chaise made her feel a bit more like a grande dame than an old one. There was a nightstand on her side of the bed, but her granddaughter, Samantha, often left little notes in the drawer and might notice the envelope. Ursula always saved the notes—bits of poetry Samantha liked or just a few words, “Have sweet dreams, Granny.” Generally Ursula did. Her days had been good ones and she felt blessed. Arnold, the two children, although Arnold junior lived in Santa Fe and she only saw him and his wife during the summer in Maine and on her annual visit out there. Three grandchildren, all healthy and finding their ways without too much difficulty so far. But you never know what life will hand you. She stood up, chiding herself. The six words—“Are you sure you were right?”—had entered her system like a poison, seeping into the very marrow of her bones and replacing her normal optimism with dark thoughts.

The mail had come at noon when the bright sun was still high in the clear blue sky. She walked to the arched window that overlooked the backyard. It was why they had chosen this room for their own, although it was not as large as the master bedroom across the hall. Each morning this uncurtained window beckoned them to a new day. And it had a window seat. The window seat! She slid the envelope under the cushion. Done. She gazed out the window, feeling herself slowly relax. The yard sloped down to the Concord River, which occasionally overflowed, flooding the swing set that was still in place. Arnie and Pix had gleefully waded out to it as children, getting gloriously wet sliding down the slide into the shallow water. The family had always kept canoes there, too, under the majestic oak planted by design or perhaps a squirrel. It didn’t matter. The tree was perfect for climbing, and a succession of tree houses. The grandchildren had added kayaks to the fleet and given her a fancy new one for her eightieth birthday, or had it been her eighty-fifth? Today the river flowed gently, its slightly rippled surface like the glass in the windows of Aleford’s oldest houses. A good day to be on the water. However, she’d promised Pix never to go out for a paddle alone. Perhaps she’d do some gardening. Yes, that was the thing. Start to clear some of the dead leaves left by winter’s ravages from the perennial border around the gazebo that Arnold had insisted they build near the riverbank. She’d been reluctant about it—no, not reluctant. That was the wrong word. Too mild. “Opposed.” That was more like it.

Ursula had never wanted to see another gazebo again, not after that earlier summer. Not after the image that had still appeared unbidden and unwanted in nightmares—and her waking thoughts. Arnold had told her this one would replace that other gazebo. It would be a symbol of their new life and their future together, blotting out the horror forever. She could call it a pergola or a garden house instead if she liked. She’d given in. And he’d been right, of course. It had brought the family much pleasure—especially, screened in, as a refuge from the mosquitoes and other insects that living by the river brought. The grandchildren loved it, too.

Yet, Ursula had never loved it.

She left the room and went downstairs, heading for the back of the house and her gardening trug in the mudroom. She stopped outside the kitchen door. Suddenly she didn’t feel like gardening or going outside at all. Suddenly she felt sick to death.

“M
y mother is never ill! I can’t possibly leave now.” Pix Miller was sitting in the kitchen of the house she’d grown up in; her friend and neighbor Faith Fairchild was across the table. They were both clutching mugs of coffee, the suburban panacea.

“I’ll be here and you know Dr. Homans says the worst is over. That there’s nothing to worry about. Never really was. A bad bout of the flu.” Faith found herself imitating the doctor’s very words and clipped Yankee tone.

“Dora will keep coming nights for as long as we want.” Pix was thinking out loud. Dora McNeill was an institution in Aleford, Massachusetts, the small town west of Boston where Pix, Faith, and their families lived. Dora, a private-duty nurse, had cared for Aleford’s populace for as long as anyone could remember. Her arrival at a bedside brought instant comfort, both for the patient and kin. “Dora’s coming” was tantamount to a sickroom lottery win.

“I’ll keep bringing food. I know she makes breakfast and what she thinks Ursula can tolerate for other meals, but Dora needs heartier fare.” Faith was a caterer and her thoughts normally turned to sustenance before all else.

“Maybe I should skip Hilton Head and just go to Charleston. I could go down for the shower—it’s in the afternoon—and come back the next day.”

“Let’s start with the fact that Ursula would be very upset if you didn’t go for the whole time, which means both places. You wouldn’t be able to tell her—she’d send you packing instantly—so the only way you could see her would be when she was asleep, or by sneaking a peek through the door. So, there’s no point to staying on her account.

“Besides, she’ll want a blow-by-blow description of everything. Sometimes I think she’s more excited about the wedding than you are.”

“I’m very excited about the wedding,” Pix said defensively. “Our firstborn—and Rebecca is wonderful. I couldn’t ask for a better daughter-in-law. Sam thinks so, too.”

“Her parents will be wonderful, as well.” Faith knew Pix was worried about meeting her prospective in-laws, even with her husband and offspring by her side. “They couldn’t have produced such a lovely daughter if they weren’t the same.”

She then rushed on before Pix could come up with all the exceptions to this parent/child rule they both knew.

“You can’t skip either week. Hilton Head is the whole bonding thing. They’ve even planned it so you’re going during Dan’s spring break from Clark. Samantha can work on her thesis anywhere, but Mark and Becca have been making all sorts of arrangements so they can take the time off.”

Mark Miller worked on the Hill as a congressional aide; Becca, or rather Dr. Rebecca Cohen, was an environmental scientist with the EPA. A blind date had very quickly moved into a lifelong commitment with both sets of eyes wide open. Pix had thought the oldest of her three children would follow the pattern of so many of her friends’ offspring and postpone marriage treacherously close to ticking clocks. Tying the knot at twenty-seven might mean grandchildren much sooner than she had imagined. It was one of those thoughts that was helping her to cope with the wedding.

“I’m sure we will enjoy spending time with Becca’s parents and the rest of her family.” If the sentence sounded as if she were reciting it by rote, it was because it was one Pix had repeated to herself many times.

“You’re not still thinking about that picture, are you?” Faith said sternly. “Yes, her mother is younger than you are and, yes, she dresses well, but I’m sure she’d kill for your gorgeous long legs, and don’t forget all the new clothes we bought. You’ll look terrific, too.”

Cynthia Cohen, “Cissy,” was a petite brunette, and at first glance it was hard to tell the mother from her three daughters. The photo had been taken during Mark’s first visit to the Cohens’ in Charleston and he was in the center of the group beaming. Becca’s father was presumably behind the camera. Mark had e-mailed it to his mother, who had promptly printed it out to show Faith what she was up against.

“Her makeup is perfect.”

It had taken Faith a number of years to move her friend away from a dab of lipstick for formal occasions to mascara, eye shadow, blush, and gloss. Pix still favored nothing more than a swipe of Burt’s Bees gloss on her lips for everyday.

“So is her hair.”

“She’d probably just had it done—the picture was taken during the holidays—and besides, you have lovely hair,” Faith said loyally. Pix
did
have good hair—chestnut colored and thick. She kept it short, and the only problem was its tendency to stand on end after she’d run her hand through it while engaged in contemplation, a habit hard to break.

“I still don’t think I needed all those clothes. And you’ll have to go over what goes with what again. At least I don’t have to worry about where to get something to wear at the wedding. They want to use the same place for my mother-of-the-groom dress as the rest of the bridal party’s attire, so that’s settled. I have to make the final choice, though, and you know I hate to shop. Plus I’ll be shopping with strangers.”

“Samantha will be with you, remember.”

“Thank God, I’d almost forgotten,” Pix said, grasping at the lifeline her daughter’s presence would afford. Samantha, her middle child, had always been the calmest, plus she was wise in the ways of the world of fashion, often to Pix’s bemusement. The last time she’d had lunch with Samantha, Pix had offered to sew up the rips in her daughter’s very short dress only to be told that they were on purpose. She was wearing it over a kind of leotard. Pix could not believe someone would pay money to buy what would be a dust cloth in her household.

Faith looked at her friend, drank some coffee, and wished she could grab Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility to accompany skittish Pix. Meeting new in-laws was nerve-racking, but it would be beautiful at Hilton Head this time of year and better to meet now than at the wedding, where there wouldn’t be a chance to get to know one another with all the inevitable commotion. Faith should know—she’d catered enough of them. After the week at Hilton Head, everyone who had to get back to work was leaving, but Pix and Samantha were continuing on to Charleston for fittings, wedding plans, and a bridal shower. It was late March and the wedding itself would be in early June—before the real heat set in. Pix had to check out the place Faith had helped her find for the rehearsal dinner—as well as make the final arrangements for all the out-of-town guests from Mark’s side of the family. Considering this was a woman whose idea of a good time was birding at dawn in Aleford’s Willards Woods and dressing up meant exchanging L.L.Bean khakis for a Vermont Country Store wraparound skirt, her nervousness over the nuptials and face time with belles from the South was understandable.

“You’ll love Charleston, and I know the street their house is on—Hasell Street. It has to be one of the old houses, since Mark told you the family has been in Charleston for generations.” Faith was grasping for any straw she could find. Charleston’s fabled cuisine—the thought of chef Jeremiah Bacon’s shrimp and grits with andouille gravy at Carolina’s was making Faith salivate slightly—would cut no ice with Pix. Much as she adored her friend, there remained a huge gap in their respective food tastes. Pix’s kitchen cabinets and freezer were filled with boxes that had “Helper” printed on them, while Faith’s were jammed with everything but. Pix worked for Faith at her catering company, Have Faith, but kept the books. She’d accepted the job some years ago with the understanding that it would involve no food preparation of any kind except in dire emergencies such as pitching in to pack up cutlery, china, and napkins for an event.

Faith soldiered on. “You’ll find out about the house when you get there. And don’t forget the gardens. You know you love gardens. . . .”

Faith suddenly felt as if she were trying to convince a toddler to eat spinach.

“Anyway, everything will be fine,” she concluded lamely.

“Except for my mother. She might not be fine.”

She’d said it out loud, Pix thought. The dread that had been with her ever since she’d gotten the phone call from Dr. Homans that Ursula had suddenly spiked a high fever and was severely dehydrated. He was admitting her to Emerson Hospital for treatment, fearing pneumonia. It wasn’t pneumonia, thank goodness. He’d discharged her as soon as possible—so she wouldn’t pick anything else up—but she had been quite ill and still hadn’t recovered. Pix knew her mother would die someday. It was all part of the plan and she didn’t fear her own death. She just didn’t want her mother to die.