Past Malice (13 page)

“Well, I think that after lunch, we’ll take some photos of what we’ve got exposed so far and then move Meg and Bucky over to start the next set of units. You ready for the big time, Bucks? A unit of your own?”

“Sure, no problem.” The words were flat; the magic of the moment with the bee was gone.

“Okay, good. Meg’ll be there if you have any questions and she’s the one to watch for a good example.”

“I think I can get a good start today.”

We looked at the map and considered the tree line that marked the edge of the Chandler House property and the now-empty Mather House. The units would go there to see if we could pick up anything that might have marked the boundary, or possibly identify any outbuildings associated with the landing. “Find me something good,” I finished.

“What do you want, as long as I’m taking orders?” Meg asked.

“Another foundation would be good, but make it early. Pre-Chandler European, if you want.”

Meg pretended to write down a lunch order. “Pile of old rocks, hold the elites.”

“I’ll be back around in a bit to see what you’re up to.”

I tucked the map into my notebook and we walked back to the main part of the dig, where quite a crowd had gathered. They were staring at the now-exposed brick foundation, too small for a house structure, too large and too close to the main part of the house for a shed. There was a nearly three-foot break in the line of bricks, which looked as though a doorway belonged there. There were still those irregular pits, spaced around the edge of the features and throughout the interior of the brick perimeter.

“Emma, can we get any shots from the upstairs windows?” Rob asked. “An overhead shot might give us a little better picture of what’s going on here.”

I looked up, shading my eyes. “I checked with Fee, and the two windows that we could use are blocked by pieces of furniture. I’ll try to talk her into it, but they are covered with things, and it would be a production to try and move them. It’s worth the effort though, you’re right.”

It took us a good forty-five minutes of fiddling with the
photographic work but I knew it would be worth it in the end, once we had the foundation recorded. I just knew that with a little work on the microstratigraphic level, we’d be able to say something interesting about what was going on here directly after the fire.

Bray Chandler wandered by the site right after we finished. Characteristically, after a grunted “hello,” he stood and stared without a word, not asking questions, not offering insights. Remembering the discussion about Nicholas Chandler, I told Bray about what I’d seen in the records at the library.

“So I think that if you went back to England, to poke around the collections there, you’d be able to clear it up for sure. But it doesn’t look like Nicholas was Margaret’s son to me. It might be a family of Chandlers unrelated to Margaret and Matthew, but I doubt that.”

He was quiet for a long time, and maybe I’d had him figured wrong; he was just taking things in, considering them. His next words were a surprise to me, though. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

I laughed. “I won’t be taking out an ad in the paper, if that’s what you mean, but, yes, it will go into my report.”

But whatever thought I had that he was teasing me was incorrect. “You can’t possibly publish that! There’s…there’s no earthly reason to!”

I could feel the smile leaving my face as I realized he was far from being intrigued or amused. “Except for the fact that it’s what I’m able to say at this moment is the truth. It’s part of my work and I’m professionally obliged to publish it.”

The garden gnome began to get agitated. “It’s a detail…that’s all, a minor, unsubstantiated detail that can’t possibly make one scrap of difference to anyone.”

It certainly seems to be more than a scrap of difference to you, I thought. “Right, so why get so upset about it?”

“It…it would upset my mother,” he said. “She…she shouldn’t like to think there had been any…irregularity in the family history.”

I almost laughed again, that was so weak. “I’m sure that it wouldn’t bother her. I mean, this was nearly three hundred years ago. Most people in the older generations are tickled to find that there’s some juicy colonial scandal in their past; it’s just fun to tell about and it doesn’t hurt anyone—”

“It could hurt me,” he muttered.

“—and we don’t even know that there is a scandal. I’ll keep researching and you never know. It might be a bureaucratic error, it might be a former marriage of Matthew’s that I don’t know about yet—”

“There was no former marriage; it doesn’t appear in any genealogy I’ve ever seen.”

“—or it might be a cousin who was adopted into the family. There are plenty of perfectly ordinary reasons for it to be there.”

“But there may not be. Perhaps your professional obligations might keep you from printing things you can’t verify.”

“Are you kidding me? Theory accounts for ninety percent of our published material.” But another attempt on my part to add levity to the situation was a little like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.

“You’re not taking this seriously. You have no idea of the ramifications of this.”

I sighed. “Then tell me.”

All he said was, “It’s personal. Deeply personal. And it will do a lot of harm.”

“Well, if you tell me how….”

“This is really none of your business and I advise you to keep your nose out of it.”

Bray stomped off toward the house, just as Ted came around the corner.

“He’s in danger of breaking his contract with his wife,” Ted whispered, as if that would explain everything. It was abundantly clear that he’d been listening in to my discussion with Bray. I admit that made my answer snappish.

“Contract? What could anything that happened three centuries ago have anything to do with—?”

“They have an agreement. She has the money, he has the name. A name that opens a lot of doors around here, and that is very handy to her business. She’s one of them venture capitalists. She funds his whatdoyoucallit, lifestyle, and he makes her a part of the family.”

“That sounds a little clinical to me. I mean, you don’t have to get married to do that.”

“It’s handy to be married, sometimes,” he said cryptically. “The other part of the agreement is that he keeps his nose clean, and that is where he’s been having a little trouble lately. Can’t keep away from the ladies. And if any scandal should reach the ears of Mrs. Bradley Chandler…”

“He would lose his meal ticket. And here I am providing him with another reason, however slight, to worry about that.” It was a matter of one scandal, however remote and insignificant, reminding him of his own peccadilloes.

“There you are. I mean, he could take a little more care. It’s almost as though he wants to get caught.”

“He probably regrets his decision now, I bet.”

Ted shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. He’s not that complicated a person; he’s probably just trying to have his cake and eat it too.”

“Thanks, Ted.”

I mulled that over as I went to take advantage of one of the principal amenities of the Chandler House dig: the indoor toilet. I had to admit that, as a site, the Chandler House did provide some pretty spectacular perks. For one thing, there was no poison ivy and little to worry about in the way
of ticks; the lawns and grounds were always kept carefully manicured, thanks to the good offices of Jerry and company, for the visitors. The view of the water was superb and the gardens around us in the back of the house made for some first-rate lunchtime lounging, although we were always careful to keep our sloppy selves a bit off the beaten path. But having a clean indoor bathroom at our disposal really made a nice change of pace.

The toilet was, however, an afterthought in the old house, wedged in under the staircase in the hallway and next to Aden’s office. You had to be something of a contortionist to use it, and it wasn’t made any easier by the fact that I was as usual festooned with various tools stuck on and in my belt and crammed into my pockets. Still, it was with a good deal of satisfaction that, when I washed my hands prior to peeing—a habit borne of many years working near poison ivy—there was actually some genuine dirt on them. This meant that I’d actually spent some time messing around with the stratigraphy, my nose in the dirt, and that meant today was a good day.

I was just sticking my trowel back into my belt when I heard Aden’s voice right behind me. I jumped, but then realized as I bumped my head that there was barely room in the bathroom for me, and that his voice was being carried along by one of the air ducts.

“—pretty sure we would have seen the money by this time, after our last little conversation, Fee.”

“Aden, I don’t know what the problem is. I can’t understand—”

“But I think I do understand, Fee. We both know, don’t we, that you’ve been short of cash lately? Times are difficult and you told me yourself that your investments went the way of the dodo. You’ve had to dip into capital, as we say,
haven’t you? Only there isn’t so much of that either, is there? This job means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

I could barely make out Fee’s voice. “You know it does.”

“It would be difficult for an aging…person…such as yourself to find another job, especially in this economy, wouldn’t it?”

The strain in Fee’s voice was audible through the ducts. “Aden, what do you want from me? You know I didn’t take it and you’ve already—”

“You know what I want. I want my money back.”

“It’s not your money, Aden.”

“But you know, I’ve come to think of it that way. You’re the one with the books, you find out where the money could have gone. By, shall we say, Friday? Yes, I think so. I think that would do nicely.”

Fee said something that I couldn’t make out. Aden laughed.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have known that word, Fee. But I’m sorry to say, it’s not the first time that it’s been applied to me. Friday then. Or we start going through official channels.”

I was about to duck out of the bathroom when I heard his door slam. Fee was hurrying back to her office. I waited another moment before I quietly let myself out of the bathroom and sidled past Fee’s closed door.

I was still looking behind me, making sure that no one had noticed my too-hasty exit from the building, when I bumped into something. Ted was standing right behind me. I gasped.

He took my arm and quickly led me back around toward the front of the house, away from where the students were working on the units, away from where we had collided, which was right under Aden’s window.

“That was quite an earful, now, wasn’t it?” His eagerness made me queasy.

“I…I wasn’t—”

“I know. But maybe you should. There’s a lot you don’t know about what’s going on around here, and maybe you should know.”

I smoothed out a wrinkle in my sleeve, putting as much as my feeling about intentional eavesdroppers into my reply as I could manage. “I’m sure it’s nothing to do with me.”

“Sure, but wouldn’t you rather know why you went for an unexpected swim yesterday?”

I eyed him distrustfully. “And just what do you know about that?”

“Only that it happened. Anything else, well, they’re just my theories. If you want to hear them, and it might be good for you to do so, come have a beer with me after work and I’ll fill you in. It will only take a minute. I’ll tell you about some of the history the Historical Society doesn’t trot out for the public.”

“I
’
LL SEE,
”
WAS ALL
I
COULD MANAGE.
I
WANTED TO
get back to work, away from these people who, for some reason, were so eager to reveal each other’s habits to me.

Ted was trying not to look eager at my halfhearted response. “If you’re interested, I’ll be by my car about five.” He left.

I scurried back to the site, trying to gather my thoughts. I gnawed on a pen cap, which didn’t do much to quiet my pounding heart, and neither did what I saw next. Perry Taylor was walking along the lawn with Daniel Voeller, deep in conversation. Whatever it was must have been fairly intense, because at one point, Daniel paused and looked around before he began talking again, low and close to Perry. I wondered whether Perry was aware of how tightly her fingers were wrapped in the fabric of her skirt. They parted, neither looking entirely satisfied.

Daniel walked toward the house, and I jumped a little when our eyes met. I acted as if I had been staring into the
distance and then waved at him as if only recognizing him now. I could feel my cheeks warm, and it had nothing to do with the sun; both of us knew that I had seen him and Perry.

“Meeting with Aden,” he said as he walked past me to the house.

“Have fun,” I said, and then asked Meg a quick and unnecessary question about her progress, just to give me some cover. It was then that I decided I would go see Ted after work.

Meg and I had been able to finish marking out the new units and taking the sod, when Bucky was free to start up. Meg described what she was seeing so far—no intrusion of the twentieth-century features below the surface, and the apparent lack, so far, of anything but late-eighteenth-century materials.

“Meg, would you come with me? I want to have a look at the insurance map. Buckwheat, why don’t you finish up the paperwork?”

There was no response from my sister; she was already hunched over her clipboard, closing out her notes on the first part of the site she’d worked on. She was taking to the habits of fieldwork as if she hadn’t just started learning about it three days ago.

Meg and I walked out a bit, toward the fence that marked the edge of the site near the cliff. “I just want to make sure you know this isn’t a baby-sitting job. I want you to get a quick look at this area, and I know you can juggle that and keep an eye on Bucky, if she needs it.”

“She’ll do okay; she was doing fine with the unit I helped her on.”

I nodded. “I don’t want to spend a lot of time out here, but as long as we have the chance….”

“Right. Quick and dirty. It’ll go faster without the audience participation from the tourons too.”

At the end of the day, everyone was finishing closing up the main part of the site and locking the tools away, when I found Bucky chatting merrily away with Perry, who took every opportunity to drop by and follow our progress. That was also unusual; my sister seldom took the trouble to be social, and Perry—the epitome of what our mother had hoped Bucky and I would be—was definitely not Bucky’s cup of tea. A little too overly mannered, a little too cute. But, I reasoned, Perry was a decent sort, if a little self-centered, and it was possible that Bucky was growing into a few social graces. It was well past time for it.

“—just past the center of town. It’s really simple,” Perry was saying.

“Good deal. Thanks,” my sister said.

“Sorry to break this up,” I said, “but I’ve got to get you off home, Bucks. I’ve got an appointment to get to.”

“No problem, we’re done.” Perry waved her cast. “I’ve got to get going too. Doctor’s appointment.”

She looked really worn and drawn to me. “How’s your arm doing?” I asked.

“Still hurts like a bear, but that shouldn’t be too bad for too much longer. I’m not looking forward to the physical therapy, though. I hear it’s pretty grueling.” She grimaced and I said good-bye.

I dropped Bucky off at home, then rushed back to meet Ted in the parking lot of the Chandler House. He was leaning on the back of his car, a dark blue Dart that was spic and span. He’d never have to worry about getting his trousers dirty. Again, I thought that I really should do something about my ancient Civic. Ted offered to drive.

“Are we heading for Shade’s?” I asked. “They have a pretty good bar in there.”

Ted snorted. “I wouldn’t be caught dead there. Batcha
snobs. No, we’re just going down the street and around the bend to the Little Green Bar.”

The part of town we ended up in, literally down the point from the Chandler House, was probably one of the oldest in town that was still standing, and, after the first prosperous generation, it had developed into a working-class neighborhood. Those two factors in mind, it had taken the hardest use over the years: Tiny houses that were built before the Declaration was signed were squeezed between early-twentieth-century triple-deckers with a porch on every floor. All the houses were butted right up against the street with no room for a front yard, though almost every house had at least one windowbox full of blooms. Many were sporting the Stars and Stripes in anticipation of Independence Day, and the near-universal choice of flowers—red geraniums, white impatiens, and purple petunias—also seemed to reflect that sentiment. I realized that some of the flags were looking tattered after having been outside continuously for nearly a year.

The bar was close to the water, a little brick joint with a green door and a couple of neon signs in the high, tiny windows. Ted pulled over onto the dirt verge.

“The original bar was painted green, so when it burned down, the name stayed, even if the owner decided brick was a better idea,” he said. His faults aside, Ted did know the town history.

“You don’t mean that the original burned down back in the fire of seventeen-thirty-eight?” I said doubtfully. “It can’t be that old.”

“No, but I bet there was a bar or a tavern or something here then too.” Ted pulled the door open and held it for me. “A place for the sailors and fishermen to hang out.”

“Makes sense.”

“This place burned down in the nineteen-forties. And
again in the nineteen-seventies; that’s when the brick came in.”

“Good idea.” I had to pause in the doorway, the difference in light was so great and the smell was overwhelmingly of old beer and stale cigarette smoke. Inside was nothing remarkable: a television suspended over the bar broadcast the baseball game, and I noted that the Red Sox were playing Cleveland; a mirror behind the bar was doing its best to reflect the backs of the lines of bottles—mostly blended whiskeys, bourbon, gin, and vodka—and struggling through a thick layer of soot or grease to do it; there were three optics, all for national-brand domestic beers. There were only two other drinkers, sitting in a booth, besides the bartender. Ted was the only one wearing a necktie, and he pulled it off and stuck it into a pocket as soon as we sat down.

Ted hesitated. “What’ll you have? I don’t know as they’re set for anything fancy….”

“Draft is fine for me,” I said.

Ted looked pleasantly surprised. “Two drafts, Bill.”

Bill got the beers by feel, as he clearly wasn’t going to tear his eyes away from the game. They were cold and the glasses were clean, and it was nice to be out of the sun.

“So tell me about your theories,” I said after we’d had a chance to wash the dust away.

Ted pursed his lips, almost as if he were belatedly trying to decide whether to keep them closed. “I wouldn’t go so far as to call them theories. That’s too big a word. Call ’em hunches, and you’ll be closer to the truth.” He took a small, neat sip of his beer. “And my hunch is that the Historical Society is a lot of things to a lot of people, if you know what I mean, but the biggest thing it is, is window dressing.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean it makes people feel important when they really aren’t. It makes them feel like they’re a part of the town, you
know, or the neighborhood, when they’re not. And it makes them seem respectable, when there isn’t enough decency in some of them to fill an ant’s Dixie cup. Window dressing.” He reached over and adjusted one of the cocktail napkins so that it fit squarely on the top of the pile on the bar.

I nodded. “I was wondering about all that myself. There does seem to be an awful lot going on, between the town and the Historical Society, right about now.”

Again he demurred. “There is and there isn’t, that I know for sure. Some of it’s just Aden flexing his muscles, you know, and some of it’s a real problem, or will be, somewhere down the line. Aden does that, likes to have his power felt, every once in a while, and sometimes he’s more obvious about it than he should be.”

I’d never heard anyone criticize Aden Fiske so openly before, though it seemed that plenty of people would have liked to. Then I recalled Daniel’s assessment of Ted as a political creature and wondered what his motives were in telling me any of this. “Who does he want to feel his power, do you think?”

Now he was certain. “I don’t think: I know. It’s that old guy, Voeller. It doesn’t have anything to do with the bus routes, it has to do with the factory. The two of them act like the town is their private playground. Carving it up between them, trying to outdo each other. It’s a game, and they don’t much care about how it affects anyone else.”

I took a sip of my beer. “You don’t think much of Aden.”

Ted shrugged. “So he writes me a check, so what? The guy’s a runt. I don’t mean like, small physically. I mean he’s got a runt’s attitude, always needs to be the one on top, always needs to act like he’s everyone’s friend. But he’s not choosy about how he builds up his side; if he’s got something on you, he’ll use it.” He took another sip of beer,
maybe moving the level of it down an eighth of an inch. “I don’t buy the nicey-nice from him.”

“So you figure that’s why someone punctured the fuel tank in his motorboat?”

Ted looked solemn. “Probably. Hang on a sec.” He leaned over and called to Bill, still engrossed in the game. “Hey Bill, you know anyone got a beef against Aden Fiske?”

Bill’s voice was a low growl and he answered while still glued to the set. “Do I know anyone who doesn’t?”

“Yeah, okay, what about someone willing to act on it?”

“You mean the Tapley House?”

“I mean someone did his boat.”

That drew Bill’s eyes away from the game. “Let me ask around, okay?” He noticed I was there for the first time and gave me a look like he was wondering if I was the health department. “Who’re you?”

Ted answered for me. “Archaeologist. She’s working down at the house with me.”

“Archaeologist?”

“Yeah, you know. The study of man’s past?”

“Huh.” Bill turned and regarded me as he might any curiosity. “I woulda thought Teddy here’d be more interested in the study of woman’s past—oh, Jesus Christ!”

The Indians had caught a pop fly and effectively ended Bill’s participation in the conversation. I had to steel myself against watching the game, much as I wanted to, and focus on the conversation.

“Don’t mind him, he’s okay,” Ted vouched for the bartender, who was moving in on the television set as if his presence would goose the Sox lineup. “He hears anything, I’ll let you know.”

“What was that I overheard about Aden’s money?” I was
assuming that Ted had heard too, but he didn’t seem to mind that. “Some gone missing lately?”

“I don’t know. Market crunch hit a lot of people around here pretty hard, everyone’s short. I doubt it’s his money though; I think if anything, Fee was talking about Chandler House takings.”

“Would she have taken it, do you think?”

Ted stopped to take another tiny sip. He rearranged the glass so that it was exactly in the center of the coaster, which was aligned to be parallel with the line of the bar. He began to say something, thought better of it, then tried again. “Fee’s pretty upright about most things. I don’t think she would’ve taken it.”

“Most things?”

He pursed his lips. “Her business, not mine to say. Not Aden’s either, when it comes down to it, the sumbitch.” He glared darkly at the top of the bar. “It’s not right, how he carries on.” He snapped out of it. “But there are plenty of folks who might tell you more about Aden’s antics, along with Bill, here. Another person, you probably heard of her. Lives down on the common in that house. You know, the one with the stripes.”

It was pretty hard to miss “the one with the stripes,” as it stuck out like a candy-colored zebra in the middle of all those monochromatic cubes, a flower child among stolid burghers. “Who is she?”

“Janice Booth is a painter, does mostly seascapes. She is pretty well known, in her circles, but you know, she’ll never get rich. Well, that house has been in her family since they built it there, and she’s hung on to it with a death grip, specially the last couple of years when the taxes shot up so high. She’s got some other artist-types living with her, paying rent, which is just about tolerated, and that keeps the roof over her head, if not actually leakproof. She’s well liked
around here, does some volunteering at the schools to teach kids about art, you know? But she and Aden got about as much use for each other as Bill there’s got use for the Yankees, and something came up a couple of years ago when her place was getting a little rundown. Since the house is technically part of the historic district, there are rules about maintenance and that sort of thing, and Aden took the opportunity to give her some trouble about it. If anyone heard anything about someone with a grudge, she might have.”

Ted took another, almost dainty, sip of beer and grinned humorlessly.

“Aden offered to buy her place, right after he smacked her with the regulations. But Janice is not the kind to roll over and she’s not the kind to neglect the fine print. All she had to see was that it was required that the house be painted in the colors previously approved by the historic district; it didn’t say anything about the house having to be all in one color. So she painted every other clapboard of the sides on the street one of the colors: yellow, gray, white, blue, brown, red. It looks kind of nice too—she wasn’t going to sacrifice her sense of color or anything—but you notice that the sides of the house where she has the garden, where she and her ‘paying guests’ spend their time is all one color—she’s no fool. I guess it helps with her light or something.”