The Body in the Gazebo (17 page)

Once Ursula was ensconced in front of the fire with an afghan that Faith recognized as Pix’s handiwork, she began to talk.

“As I said, I hadn’t given any thought to Arnold Rowe. I tried not to think about that night at all, although it was always with me, not far from the surface. I was very restless in Aleford and had never settled into the Cabot School. I thought of myself as a city girl.

“Time went by, I turned sixteen and shortly afterward two things happened that changed my life forever. The first was finding a box of clippings about the murder and the trial. The Adams Street house had a large attic and things from our Boston house that Mother wanted to save, but didn’t have room for downstairs, were stored there. She never liked to go up in the attic—mice and spiders—but I loved it. There were two small round windows at either end, so it wasn’t dark. I’d often take a book and curl up on a chair that I’d dragged closer to the light at the end overlooking the garden. The trunks and boxes didn’t interest me, but one day Mother asked me to go through them for some curtains when I went up to read. She thought she could have Mrs. Hansen cut them down for the kitchen. The Hansens were going back to Norway, much to my dismay—I was already missing Marit—and Mother wanted to get as much sewing as possible done before they left.

“I found the curtains after much searching and was about to close that trunk when I saw there was a letter file in the bottom. These were large hinged boxes covered with marbleized paper where people used to file correspondence. My father had rows of them on the shelves in his office and I wondered what this one was doing here. I opened it and saw that the folders were filled with newspaper clippings and letters from a Boston law firm.

“I knew what it contained even before reading a single word—and why it had been tucked so far away. Perhaps that wasn’t a bad idea, and I considered leaving it where it was, unread. I was torn between not wanting to be reminded of that summer and wanting to know what had been happening during the time I had been ill. And then one of the headlines caught my eye: ‘Sentenced to Life: Tutor Convicted of Murdering Pupil.’

“I felt sick. All the time that I’d been going about my little life, Arnold Rowe had been in prison for his life—the Charles Street Jail, to be precise.”

Faith wondered whether Ursula knew that the jail, closed in 1973 because overcrowding violated the constitutional rights of the inmates, had reopened in 2007, after extensive remodeling, as a high-end luxury hotel ironically named the Liberty Hotel. Faith wasn’t sure whether such features as the Alibi Bar in the old drunk tank, the Clink restaurant with its vestiges of the original jail cells, and even the phone number (JAIL) represented a witty or totally inappropriate sense of humor. In its day, just before the Civil War, it had been hailed as a step forward in prison architecture with four wings to segregate prisoners by gender and offense extending from a ninety-foot-tall atrium. The multitude of arched windows set into the granite structure let in light and air, but didn’t let anyone out, of course.

“I started to read straight through. The first clippings described the murder itself and I immediately knew something was wrong with the reports. First of all, the party was described as a ‘small gathering of friends,’ and then there was a reference to an eyewitness who saw Theo go toward the gazebo at midnight followed by Arnold Rowe. I felt terribly confused. Certain parts of the night were as clear in my memory as they had been when they happened and I knew that Theo had been in the gazebo arguing with someone, a man, well before midnight. I’d been asleep and they’d awakened me. My watch had a luminous dial, quite a new thing, and it was eleven-thirty. I wasn’t able to identify the man’s voice, just Theo’s, but I did know it wasn’t Arnold’s. So who was there earlier with Theo? I read through the rest of the articles on the murder, including the news of Arnold’s arrest. There were far fewer about the trial, which was held in Edgartown at the Dukes County Courthouse. By that time, the country was caught up in the aftermath of the stock market crash. People were more concerned about their next meal and a roof over their heads than what was characterized as a fight turned deadly between two Harvard students. The trial was short and the guilty verdict swift. A court-appointed lawyer represented Arnold. I couldn’t find any indications of his line of defense. Without the proper facility on the island, Arnold had been immediately transferred to the prison in Boston.”

Ursula had been only sixteen! Faith pictured herself at that age. Her sister, a year younger, had mapped out her entire future—Pelham College undergrad, Harvard for an MBA, summer internships at the appropriate firms, and finally partner with a corner office on a top floor with multiple-figure bonuses. And it had all come true. Faith meanwhile had been busy thinking up ever new excuses to get out of gym and ways to get Emilio, the very cool Italian exchange student, to notice her. Ursula at that age was dealing with issues an adult would have had difficulty with—complicated by grief over an irreplaceable loss.

“Finding the box was both liberating—I now knew more about what happened—and depressing—there were still so many unanswered questions. Had there been a thorough investigation? And what about the reporters’ mistakes? It was not a small party, but a very large one. There was a single sentence mentioning a ‘fierce’ argument earlier in the evening between my brother and Arnold Rowe. Yet, at the time when it supposedly occurred we were at Illumination Night. The word ‘fierce’ surprised me, too. Theo could get annoyed, but even when he’d overly imbibed—in fact especially then—he was always very easygoing, and I’d never heard the Professor raise his voice.

“I returned often in the following weeks to reread the contents of the box until I had it virtually memorized, and then there was the second stroke of luck. Or divine intervention, if you will. I firmly believe in both.

“Mother and I had taken the train into town to see Aunt Myrtle. My cousins, whom I had thought would be there, weren’t at home. Seeing that I was at loose ends, my aunt sent me to Stearn’s to buy gloves on her account. I’m sure she noticed the ones I was wearing were outgrown. In those days you didn’t go into town without a hat and gloves. The department store was on Tremont Street across from the Common. I wish you could have seen it—it closed in the late 1970s. Such elegance.”

“My mother and I still miss B. Altman in New York—it sounds like the same kind of place.”

“I had selected a lovely pair of gray kid gloves when I heard a couple talking behind me. The man was urging the woman to buy a coat she had just tried on. He was tired of shopping and didn’t want to go to another store. She was resisting. I recognized both their voices immediately and told the saleswoman I wanted to try the gloves on in brown so I could remain at the counter. The woman was Violet Hammond and the man was Charles Winthrop. They hadn’t changed much, especially Violet. She was still turning heads.

“When the saleswoman brought the gloves for me to try on, my hands were shaking. Violet and Charles were continuing their discussion directly behind me. He was growing increasingly angry and I didn’t simply recognize the voice of the man who had been a guest at the Vineyard, but I recognized it as the man who had been arguing with Theo in the gazebo. Charles Winthrop was there well before Arnold. Charles Winthrop was the one who was desperate for money. Charles Winthrop had killed Theo.”

“Are you all right, miss?”

“Yes, just a bit faint. I’ll be fine in a minute.”

Ursula desperately needed to sit down. She was leaning against the counter, the neat rows of gloves arrayed on the shelves beneath the glass. So many kinds of gloves. Long, short, even the arm-length kind debutantes and brides wore. They began to swirl together in front of her eyes. She closed them to keep from passing out.

Charles Winthrop. The voice. The other noises. He’d hit Theo. In her mind she heard her brother again, “Whadya have to smack me for? Thought we were friends.” The thumping noise. Charles must have hit Theo again, hit him too hard. The sound she’d assumed was both of them running back to the party had been Charles alone. Charles running away to do what? Involve Arnold Rowe. Find someone else to blame. Maybe it was an accident. It had to have been. People didn’t go around killing people like that. He’d hit Theo too hard. It had to be that.

No! It wasn’t supposed to be at all. Theo was dead and Charles was guilty. Not the young man in a cell a short walk away.

“I’ll be a good little wife, Charlie. Calm down. People are starting to look at us. It’s a perfectly adorable coat.”

The couple moved off. Ursula told the saleswoman she’d take the gray gloves. By the time they were signed for and wrapped, she had regained her composure.

“The couple behind me just now. Do you know who they are?”

The girl answered readily, “Oh yes, miss. That’s Mr. and Mrs. Charles Winthrop. Very good customers.”

Ursula had had to be sure. And she was also sure of her next stop. Her mother and her aunt would talk for hours more. She tucked her parcel in her purse and turned her steps toward the Charles Street Jail.

T
he fire was burning low, but Faith didn’t want to interrupt Ursula by putting another log on. Outside the rain had tapered off, but the sky was still dark.

“I’ve never told anyone about all this, except Arnold of course. A few days ago you and I were talking about coincidence. Cosmic coincidences, a dear friend used to call them. If Aunt Myrtle hadn’t sent me to Stearn’s it’s unlikely that I would ever have seen the Winthrops. I was seldom in town, and in any case, we didn’t travel in the same circles.

“Unlike today, that day was beautiful. Early spring, like now. As I walked down Tremont Street past King’s Chapel and, yes, continuing on through Scollay Square into the West End, where the jail was located, I felt a warm presence. It was as though Theo were near. It gave me courage and strengthened my resolve. I thought I knew now who had killed him, but even so I realized I had known all along that Arnold hadn’t.”

Ursula paused, staring into the embers in the fireplace.

“That being so, I was just going to have to unmask the real murderer myself.”

Chapter 8

I
t took Faith about twelve seconds to decide Lily Sinclair was a total bitch.

Hoping that face-to-face contact would give her an advantage in discovering any involvement on Lily’s part, Faith didn’t call the young divinity school student, but took a chance at finding her home early on a Monday morning. Lily lived in Somerville off Davis Square. Faith was meeting Zach Cummings at a nearby Starbucks at ten. Zach lived in Somerville, too. Somerville was a very happening place, much more affordable than Cambridge. New restaurants, bars, cafés, and shops had sprung up like mushrooms, fortunately not displacing old favorites like Redbones barbecue.

The face-to-face was not going well. Yes, Lily was home, but for a while it seemed Faith’s interaction with her would begin and end quickly on the front porch of the double-decker’s first-floor apartment. Lily’s name, plus two others, was listed by the buzzer. Lily had answered the door, but didn’t take the chain off. The opening was wide enough to reveal that her visitor was someone known to her and not an assailant, but she still didn’t make a move. Her face was impassive.

“Hi, Lily. It’s Faith, Faith Fairchild.”

“Yes, I know. What do you want?”

That’s when Faith rapidly jumped to her conclusion. At the same time, she realized that she really didn’t know the people with whom Tom worked anymore. When they were first married—and continuing on to when the kids were younger before she had started the business again—she had had much more contact with everyone working in the church offices. Walter, James Holden’s predecessor, had been a dear family friend.

Lily had been one in a string of interns that were little more than names to Faith, but she thought she had parted on good, if not close, terms with the young woman. She’d brought Lily a going-away gift her last Sunday in church back in January and had received a smiling thank-you. What had happened since then?

“May I come in?” Faith was beginning to feel like someone selling encyclopedias.

The door closed, and then opened wide. Lily, who was wearing Hello Kitty pajamas, led the way down a short hall into the kitchen at the rear of the apartment. It was obviously shared. Dishes were piled in the sink and a pot of what might have been chili was on the stove, its burners encrusted with many other offerings. Lily sat down and picked up the spoon sticking out from a bowl of cereal. She didn’t offer Faith anything—neither a seat nor food. Faith was happy at this particular rudeness as it meant she wouldn’t have to say no. It wasn’t that the place was a health hazard, well maybe, but it certainly was unappetizing.

“I know why you’re here,” Lily said, crunching her granola.

“You do?” For a moment Faith herself had lost the thread. She was distracted by a makeshift clothesline strung from a knob on a cabinet to a catch on one of the windows. It was adorned with rather gray BVDs and decidedly not gray thongs.

“Look, I didn’t take the money. I never even knew about the fund. And if you must know, my time in Aleford, or should I say Stepford, convinced me a parish ministry is the last thing I want. I’ve taken a leave from the Div School.” She put her spoon down and drank the milk from the bowl.

Faith concentrated on the first words.

“How do you know about the missing money?”

Lily shrugged. “I guess it’s no big secret. Al told me.”

Albert Trumbull, the parish secretary, or rather administrative assistant. Faith didn’t really know him all that well, either. Certainly she wasn’t on an “Al” basis with him. She longed for the good old days with Madame Rhoda and her psychic powers, a mystery at first when the woman appeared to be living a double life, but oh so much more explainable than all this young weltschmerz. Albert was on leave from the Div School and finding himself, too.
O tempora, O mores.

Faith thought she should express concern over the second half of Lily’s remarks. The missing money could wait a bit.

“It sounds as if you weren’t happy at First Parish and I hope your time with us didn’t contribute to your decision. You know Tom is always available to talk with you.”

Lily flushed and pushed her bowl away. “Oh, he’s a talker, all right, and let’s just say my time with you didn’t ‘contribute,’ it
caused
my decision.”

Before Faith could say anything more, Lily got up and moved toward the door to the hall. The interview was clearly over. Faith had no choice but to follow.

As Lily virtually pushed her out, Faith managed to ask, “Do you have any idea who might have taken the money?”

Lily smiled wickedly. “I’d suggest you ask your husband. The talker.”

Walking back toward Elm Street and Starbucks, Faith’s mind was filled with questions for her husband, but they didn’t have to do with the missing funds. They concerned Ms. Lily Sinclair.

F
aith was on her second latte—she’d indulged in whole milk for the first one to soothe her troubled soul and was now nursing a skinny one—when Zach Cummings walked in. She’d scored two comfy armchairs, placing her jacket on the unoccupied one and ignoring an occasional angry look. Let them displace some of the other customers who seemed to have moved in with their laptops permanently—and nary a cup of joe in sight.

She waved Zach over and handed him her Rewards Card.

“Go nuts. Get whatever you want,” she said. Zach was taller than he’d been when she’d met him at Mansfield Academy years ago, but still as thin, and still dressed in black. His legs looked like pipe stems and he was wearing a T-shirt with a screwdriver pictured in white that read
I VOID WARRANTIES
.

He reached into a pocket and waved his own card.

“I’ve got it. You good?”

She nodded. It was hard to remember he was an adult now. Or almost.

He returned with what appeared to be a Venti of black coffee.

“So, what’s up?” he said.

“I need to know how someone could get access to someone else’s bank account through an ATM, withdrawing a significant amount of cash over the course of a year.”

“Same machine?”

“Yes—and twenty transactions.”

“For the limit each time?”

Faith nodded.

“And this is all theoretical, right? You’re helping someone write a book or something so everything you say is off the record and vice versa?”

“Completely theoretical, hypothetical, even rhetorical. I’m a little muddled—it’s been a bad morning.”

Zach shook his head. “I’m sorry, Faith.” His expression indicated he was talking about more than her morning. He set his coffee down.

“Well, to start, have you heard of shoulder surfing?”

“Yes, but I don’t know that much about it except it’s a way to get a PIN by peeking over a shoulder somehow.”

“It’s the simplest way, especially for a nonhacker. All you have to do is act casual and watch someone enter their PIN at an ATM or a place like this—a cybercafé that has WiFi, even a library. At crowded airports, they sometimes use miniature binoculars to look at people using bank terminals. Shoulder surfing would be the first thing I’d consider, especially as it’s the same location for each transaction. Try to recall who was close by before the first withdrawal. Was it a stranger or someone our theoretical person knew?”

“Okay, what next?”

“It gets a little more complicated, but not by much for anyone with a modicum of computer smarts. These are all phishing scams, spelled with a ‘ph,’ and are what they sound like—throwing out some ‘bait’ to see what gets caught in the net, on the Net. They try to trick you into revealing things like your Social Security number, passwords, credit card numbers—you get the picture. You’ll get an e-mail or IM that seems to be an authentic one from your bank or the IRS. It purports to be alerting you to a serious problem. In order to correct it before it gets even worse, you must respond immediately with your information. It may even take you to a Web site that looks exactly like your bank’s. A recent scam claimed to be from UPS and had you enter your credit card number to track a recent attempted delivery. Most people are getting stuff all the time, or if not, might assume someone had sent a gift, so this was very effective until it was flagged.”

Faith was stunned. “I had no idea that there were all these risks. It’s a wonder anything online is safe.”

“This is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m assuming your, sorry, your friend’s account was a random attack—caught in that big net. But it may have been targeted—‘spear phishing.’ Again, there would have been an e-mail message or IM, but addressed specifically to the account’s user. There’s also ‘spoofing,’ which is forging data, particularly an address, so that it seems as if it’s secure. Misspelling one word, for example, which most people miss.”

“Spoofing, phishing—who thinks these things up?”

“Oh, hackers are fun guys. Look at me,” Zach said.

Faith did—hard.

“Whoa, I’m a White Hat. One of the good guys. I get paid to try to hack into systems and find out where they’re vulnerable. It’s a nice gig.”

“What else?”

“Ask the person if they’ve received a message to call the bank, or a phone call purporting to be from the bank or your credit card company giving you a number to call. Again there’s an urgent problem. The phone number you punch in takes you to the phisher’s, or in this case visher’s—voice phising—VOIP account, where you are asked to enter your bank account number and so forth.”

“VOIP?”

“Voice over Internet Protocol—basically what it comes down to is making ‘phone calls’ over the Internet. You have no idea that it isn’t originating from a regular phone number.”

“I don’t think there have been any calls like this, but I’ll check.”

“If you could arrange it, the best thing would be for me to take a look at the person’s computer. What is it, by the way?”

“There are two—an old MacBook and a newer Dell.” The Dell was in Tom’s office and had replaced his previous PC a year or so ago. She gave a start.

“What’s wrong?” Zach asked.

“The PC. I’m pretty sure the withdrawals started at the same time it arrived.”

“Interesting.” Zach got up and stretched. “I need more coffee. Want anything?”

Faith shook her head, but asked him what he was drinking. Black coffee seemed pretty boring and Zach was not a boring guy.

“They have something I like called the ‘Gazebo Blend.’ That with two shots.”

Skimming over the thought of all that caffeine, Faith focused on the name, and the coincidence. “Gazebo.” There are no accidents, she said to herself. It was getting to be a mantra.

When Zach returned he said, “Of course, the easiest way to get into someone’s ATM account if you have stolen the card is to guess their password. That provides access into anything password-protected on their computer, too.”

“With all the possibilities, I’d have thought this would be the most difficult.”

“People are innately trusting—or lazy. They go for the simplest to remember and they use one password for all their accounts. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six’—occasionally with more numbers in sequence—is the number one password, followed by ‘QWERTY,’ an individual’s birthday, phone number, pet name. You get the idea. Your password should have at least six letters—longer makes it more difficult for a hacker, as does mixing letters and numbers. And you should change your passwords with some frequency, but people don’t. They’re afraid they’ll forget a new one—and they’re . . .”

“Lazy,” Faith finished for him. A whole world of possibilities had opened up. Tom wasn’t lazy, but he was trusting. Very trusting. It went with the territory.

“If this is someone you know, I’ll bet you can guess his or her password.” He drained his cup. “Gotta run, but I can come out next weekend and have a look at all your computers. Check them out. Make sure you have the proper spam filters.”

Ben would be in heaven. Zach was a god so far as her son was concerned, and the highlight of his year to date had been a trip to MIT’s new Media Lab with Zach.

“You’ve been an enormous help. I wish there was something I could do in return.”

“You kept me out of jail, remember? I’d say that should do it for anything you want for the rest of your life,” Zach said, smiling.

Faith’s phone was vibrating. It was Tom.

“I need to take this,” she said.

“Go ahead. I have to get to class, so I’ll say good-bye.”

Faith answered the call, giving Zach a swift hug as he left.

“Hi, honey. I was about to call you. I’m still in Somerville.”

She had told Tom about meeting with Zach, but not about trying to see Lily. After both encounters, she was now itching to get home and talk to her spouse.

“What did he have to say?”

“Too much to go over on the phone. I’ll be home in half an hour. Can you get away?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll make lunch.”

Faith hung up. She had certainly married the right man. He had his priorities straight.

T
om had made toasted cheese sandwiches, or toasted “cheesers,” as he called them. It was his comfort food, together with Campbell’s cream of tomato soup. While Faith maintained that “food snob” was a compliment, especially in her case, she had relaxed somewhat as the years passed, realizing that one person’s caviar with the appropriate accompaniments (her ultimate comfort food) might be another’s processed soup. The Fairchild pantry always had some cans of tomato and cream of mushroom soup, Tom’s other mainstay, for times like this.

Before she told him about Lily, she gave him a summary of what Zach had said—she’d taken notes on her phone—and recommended they accept his offer to go over all their computers.

“According to Zach, because I know you so well, I should be able to guess your password. First we eliminate your birthday, or the birthday of anyone close to you.”

Tom nodded.

“And it’s not our phone number or a series of numbers in order starting with one.”

“Nope.” Tom seemed proud of himself. He’d avoided the usual traps.

“Then it’s ‘FAITH,’ and you use it for everything.”

His face fell. “How did you guess?”

“I know you, honey.”