The Body in the Gazebo (13 page)

She should have thought of this! Someone hacking into Tom’s account! Several years ago when Faith had taught a cooking for dummies course during the project week at Mansfield Academy, a local prep school, she’d met Zach Cummings, a computer whiz—although there must be some other techie term that was more precise, and colorful. Since then they’d stayed in touch. While she’d been at Mansfield she became involved in a murder investigation. Zach, innocent of any wrongdoing, had been pulled into the chaos. He was at MIT now and she’d e-mail him tonight. She felt hopeful again, and also a bit as if she were riding one of those Martha’s Vineyard carousel horses—up, down, up, down, all in the space of a few seconds. Yes, a hacker. This had to be it. The unknown stranger. The equivalent of a tramp passing through town—or rather in or near town since all the withdrawals were from the same ATM. Tom was merely unlucky. Very unlucky. It was like having your credit card number stolen by a server in a restaurant or someone who identified the card’s numbers from the touch-tones when you used it in a public place like an airport. The ATM didn’t make any noise, or did it?

Tom mentioned “God’s miracles.” Well, sometimes God needed a little help.

“Let’s go sit in the living room,” Tom said. “Kids doing homework?”

“Yes, presumably reading English assignments, although Ben is so eager to make a good impression on the practice teacher, he’s probably composing a sonnet for extra credit.”

Throughout the evening, despite all the other distractions, Ursula had been very much in Faith’s thoughts. She told Tom about Theo’s death and Arnold Rowe’s presence.

“I never met him,” Tom said. “He’d passed away before I came to First Parish, but everything I’ve heard about Arnold Rowe has always made me sorry I didn’t know him. Not just from Ursula and Pix, but others here and on Sanpere.”

“I wish I had, too. But Tom, if there had been any hint of scandal, don’t you think we’d have heard?”

This had been puzzling Faith.

“Not necessarily. It was so long ago and didn’t happen in town. I knew Ursula was born in Boston and had roots there, but it was always my impression that she’d grown up here. Arnold, too. I had no idea she was in her teens, or maybe it was even later, when she moved to Aleford. And we don’t know about her husband. As for Sanpere, there are no secrets on the island, that’s for sure, but once you cross the bridge—or in those days got on the steamer—well, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

Faith nodded in agreement. “I’ve thought of all this, but how and why did their parents keep Theo’s death—his whole life, in fact—and Arnold Rowe’s possible involvement, from Pix and her brother, Arnold junior? You hear a lot of family secrets, but isn’t this a little extreme?” Faith often lamented the fact that Tom’s calling necessitated the keeping of such secrets. Secrets she’d love to know.

“You’d be surprised,” Tom said. “Without going into specifics”—Oh, do just this once, please do! Faith said to herself—“I’ve had people tell me that they’ve just discovered a parent was married before, and with issue, that they had a sibling who died, and yes, an aunt or uncle they never knew existed. One parishioner answered a knock on the door to face her father’s duplicate. Her father had been dead for some years, so you can imagine the shock it gave her. It wasn’t a twin, but a brother two years younger who had been estranged from the rest of the family since he had run off as a teenager. He was never mentioned. There was no way his niece would have known of his existence. What was even stranger was that without ever having any contact with his older brother all those years, he’d adopted the same mannerisms, haircut, style of dress, even the frames of his glasses were identical. For some reason this struck her the most. She kept saying, ‘He was wearing my father’s glasses!’ ”

Family secrets. Tom was right. She could think of some examples, too. And something else could have played a part.

“In this case, don’t you think it’s generational, as well? Parents didn’t tell their children everything the way they tend to now.”

“I imagine when Ursula relates the rest of her story, this may be clearer. Certainly I didn’t know much about the lives of my parents and the rest of the family—or their friends—when I was growing up. The two spheres—adulthood and childhood—touched at mealtimes and a few other points, not the continuous hovering that goes on now.”

“Helicopter parents,” Faith said.

“Exactly, and I hope we’re somewhere in between. Too many secrets isn’t a good thing.”

Faith knew Tom was thinking about last fall. No, too many secrets wasn’t a good thing at all.

She thought of Niki, about Pix, Ursula of course, and someone out there who knew where the missing money was.

Sick with secrets.

A
cross town Ursula Lyman Rowe was in bed, but not asleep. It wasn’t the moonlight streaming through the window that was disturbing her slumber. It was what was below, under the cushion.

There had been a second letter in today’s mail. Dora had brought it in after Faith left. The long white envelope was mixed in with get well cards and several bills. Ursula opened it first.

There weren’t any clippings this time. Just a single sheet of the same paper with a single sentence in the same hand.

You saw the knife in his hand.

F
aith loved the Aleford library. She loved all libraries, starting with the earliest she could remember, the Sixty-seventh Street branch of the New York Public Library. It was one of those endowed by Andrew Carnegie. While the Aleford library had not had Babb, Cook, and Willard, Beaux Arts architects, as the Sixty-seventh Street library had, it was still a gem. Constructed in the early 1920s, the original fieldstone building had been expanded and renovated several times, most recently the children’s room. An anonymous donor had provided the funds for much-needed new furniture, fresh paint, and a wondrous entryway from the main library that transformed a previous small dark corridor into a bright, exotic jungle. The two walls had been mirrored, creating the illusion that the flat rows of lush green plywood foliage placed in front extended for acres. The librarians had fun periodically changing the cutouts of parrots and other creatures that peeped from behind the leaves.

Tonight’s fund-raiser was taking advantage of most of the library’s square footage. Have Faith had set up enough dessert stations so people would be able to nibble at will and not have to stand in line, or jostle each other. Coffee was in reference and there were flutes of prosecco at the circulation desk. Aleford was a dry town and likely to remain so—a package store, a “packy,” in
our
Aleford!—but dispensation was granted for special events at venues like the library and the Ganley Museum. The Minuteman Café, the café at the Ganley, Country Pizza, and the deli counter at the Shop ’n Save were the only places for food not prepared by individual Alefordians. If you wanted booze with your meal, you had to drive to Concord or Waltham. Lincoln, Aleford’s other abutter, was dry, too, although Faith had heard rumblings about a new restaurant with a liquor license. She’d like to have been a fly on the wall at
that
town meeting. Whenever the matter came up in Aleford, the picture of inebriated diners careening through the streets of town—diners from “away”—was painted with such broad strokes that those in favor of lifting the ban never stood a chance. The fact that the glass-recycling container at the Transfer Station, the dump, was the size of a boxcar and filled with a far greater number of empty wine and whiskey bottles than jelly jars did not enter into the discussion. Faith would have loved a nice little bistro in town where one could meet friends, have steak frites, and a glass of
vin
. Not in her lifetime, or rather Millicent’s.

She spied Millicent coming in the front door. She was on the board of the Friends of the Library and involved in tonight’s arrangements. She was carrying a large punch bowl.

“Some of my grandmother Revere’s gunpowder punch—minus the pinch of gunpowder, of course. I’ll put the bowl where you tell me and perhaps one of your helpers can get the punch cups and the containers of punch from my car? I know there’s coffee, but people might like something with a little kick. There’s ginger beer in it.”

She looked at Faith with such patently false disingenuousness that Faith couldn’t help laughing. They both knew the punch was intended not simply to compete with the prosecco, but obliterate it. Gunpowder, indeed.

“All right, Millicent. We’ll put it out alongside the wine and you can dispense it. I’ll send Scott Phelan out to your car. Where is it?”

“In the back, but I’ll need to mingle. I’ll line up some of the Friends to help ladle.”

There was no need to describe Millicent’s car to Scott. It was famous. He worked in a garage and body shop in nearby Byford. Every time he saw Millicent at a function while working for Faith he said the same thing: If there were more people like Millicent, he’d be out of a job. He also said he’d give anything for the car. She had purchased the Rambler in 1963 and drove it so rarely—she could walk most places—that it still looked as if it just came off the showroom floor. Not a scratch, not a dent—nothing to fix. Mint.

As Faith helped Millicent set up, she seized the opportunity to pump her in what she hoped would be a subtle way first about Arnold Rowe and then about Tom.

“It’s a shame Ursula can’t be here tonight. She’s such a fan of David Hackett Fischer’s.” The noted historian would be giving a brief talk and introducing the other invited authors.

“We
all
are,” Millicent corrected her. His book
Paul Revere’s Ride,
signed to her, took pride of place next to Millicent’s family Bible.

“I understand Ursula’s husband was quite the history buff also.” Faith felt fairly safe in her assertion. If you lived in Aleford, willingly or not, you were a history buff.

“Oh yes, Arnold was quite a scholar.”

“I’m sorry I never got the chance to meet him. From what I’ve heard he was very interesting.”

Millicent snorted. She was the only person Faith knew, other than certain teenage boys, who made this sound in public. Millicent could get away with it; the boys not.

“If by interesting you mean endlessly gazing at stars, collecting rocks, counting birds, and reading Plato in the original Greek, then yes, Arnold Rowe was interesting. Other than that a rather dull man; Ursula was the one with sparkle. Arnold was nice, but the kind of person nothing much ever happened to. Good in a husband, I suppose. Steady.”

Faith felt as if Millicent had handed her Arnold gift-wrapped. If Millicent had an inkling that there was anything dark in his past, she would not have told Faith about it, but she
would
have dangled a multitude of tantalizing hints in front of her. Millicent’s Arnold Rowe sounded very respectable, and maybe not too much fun at parties. Faith decided to continue to press her luck.

“Hard for Ursula to have been widowed so long and I don’t believe she has brothers and sisters.”

Millicent didn’t like it when people knew things she knew. “Yes, she was an only child—as was Arnold.” So there.

“I didn’t know that,” Faith said. It was important to keep Millicent happy.

Scott brought the cups and libations and for a while she was busy helping Millicent transfer the contents of several plastic liter bottles into the bowl and floating on top the orange and lemon slices Millicent had brought in an ancient Tupperware container.

“You must try a little.” Millicent beamed.

Faith had sampled the brew on other occasions and it wasn’t bad. While not revealing all of grandmother’s secret ingredients, Millicent had given Faith the basic recipe some years ago. Roughly two-to-one ginger beer to orange juice with grated nutmeg, cinnamon sticks, lemon zest, and possibly the secret ingredient was a dash of clove since Faith could definitely taste it and Millicent never mentioned it. In an earlier day, a pinch of gunpowder
was
added, which would have imparted an odd flavor—and could not have been good for you. Faith had the idea that the whole thing had originated in England to celebrate Guy Fawkes’s failed attempt to blow up Parliament. In which case, the British—used to vegetables boiled into mush and other treats—would no doubt have welcomed the gunpowder’s kick.

“Delicious. Very refreshing. We should serve this for the parents at church at our end-of-the-year Sunday school picnic. It’s been quite a year at First Parish.”

Faith cast her rod.

And got back a very rusted, very dented tin can.

Millicent looked her in the eye. “I suppose that’s what some people would call an understatement. I hope the Reverend will be here tonight. The important thing is to keep going.”

It was ludicrous to think that Millicent—all Aleford, and even most of Middlesex County—hadn’t heard about Thomas Fairchild, embezzler.

M
any miles south, but in the same time zone, Pix Miller was standing outside at the top of the Harbour Town lighthouse looking at the sunset. She was holding a glass of champagne. When she thought back on this stay at Hilton Head, glasses of champagne would figure prominently.

It was their last night and she was sorry. Each day had been a perfect blend of time together and time alone, time alone with Sam. She’d seen dolphins, birds of all sorts, and spectacular sunsets. The one that was stretched out in fiery golds and pinks sinking into the sea in front of her now was the most gorgeous. Or it could be the champagne. A girl could get used to this. She’d been running that phrase through her mind a lot this week, too.

Mother was fine. Better than fine judging from Faith’s and Dora’s daily reports. During the first enthusiastic description of how much Ursula had improved virtually the moment she left town, Pix had been slightly miffed. More than slightly. Why hadn’t Mother shown this kind of progress when her daughter was there? But then Hilton Head, her hosts, having Sam and her children around, and maybe the whole Southern charm thing began to smooth away the rough edges. She had been dreading being in Charleston, shopping, and being on her own without Sam. It was one thing to be on familiar turf like Sanpere and quite another to be someplace completely new. Now she was looking forward to it. And anyway, Samantha would be there.