The Body In the Belfry (12 page)

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Authors: Katherine Hall Page

BOOK: The Body In the Belfry
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“It's not a matter of ‘can't,' it's more ‘don't want to.'”
“But why on earth not? A person's freedom is at stake here.”
“Look, Mrs. Fairchild, the cops and me have never been what you'd call buddies. I finally got off probation a year ago and I swore I would never have anything to do with them again if I could help it.” He saw the sudden question in her eyes. “Nothing big, no B and E's or anything. Just a lot of little stuff that mounted up—vehicle unregistered, uninsured; trunacy, minor in possession. And for the record, since I'm sure you would all like to find a suspect to replace Dave, I barely knew Cindy. Didn't want to. She used to try to talk to me and I would just split.”
I'll bet she wanted to get to know you, Faith thought. What a notch that would have been in Cindy's garter belt. Suddenly she remembered what Trishia had said about Cindy going after other girls' boyfriends. Maybe she was approaching this thing from the wrong angle. Revenge could provide a pretty powerful motive for a woman scorned.
Scott was still talking. “I don't know Dave much, either. Just to say hello to.”
“But you can't let him go to prison simply because you don't have a particular fondness for the police! It's not as if you committed a crime.”
“Ah, but you see, that's the problem. Legally speaking, you're not supposed to be riding a dirt bike by the
tracks or by the power lines. And it's posted. Everybody does it, but you can get nailed for it.”
“For a person who doesn't want to have anything to do with the police, you seem to be taking some rather big chances.” Faith was getting annoyed.
Scott looked at her calmly and smiled. Trishia had said he'd like the minister's wife and Trish was usually right. That's why she made such a good girlfriend. She knew him. Ever since they had heard about the murder and Dave's arrest, she had been after him to go to the cops. She was from Aleford and knew Dave. But he wouldn't and then she came up with Mrs. Fairchild—she knew he'd much rather talk to Faith than to MacIsaac.
“Little chances,” he told her. “Tiny chances. I never ride there on weekends when people are out walking. And it's not exactly a big city police department. They don't have the manpower to stroll along the railroad tracks every noon on the off chance that Scott Phelan might go for a ride when there are all those traffic tickets to give out and lost dogs to find.”
“So you're just going to sit back and let Dave be found guilty of a murder he didn't commit!”
“Now, be calm, Mrs. Fairchild. I never said that. I said I didn't want to and I don't. And here is where you come in, and your husband, since I assume you don't keep secrets from him.”
Was he laughing at her, Faith wondered? And of course she didn't keep secrets from Tom. At least not secrets like this.
“Of course you can just go to the police and tell them what I've told you and they'll come and boot me down to the station for questioning, but what I want you to do is hold off for a day or two. They have a lot of guys working on this case and the police are not the jerks they seem to be, or not all of them anyway. They'll turn something
or someone up and then I won't have to get mixed up in it. But don't worry, I'll be a good citizen and if it looks like Dave needs my testimony, I'll come the minute you tell me to. I just don't want to get involved if I don't have to and that's the best I can do for you. Except for one more thing. If you agree to this, I'll work my butt off trying to find out anything else—starting here at Willow Tree. If someone here doesn't know all about it, it hasn't happened yet. If you don't agree, you're on your own. No hard feelings either way.”
The smile again.
Faith wasn't sure what she had gained. A partner? A Watson he wasn't and she knew that Tom for one would be appalled by the ethics or lack thereof in the agreement. But somewhere it made a little sense. In any case, it would have to do. She was sure he wouldn't have told her he had seen Dave if he hadn't been pretty sure she would agree to his terms.
“All right,” she said, rising to leave, “but not for long and we get to tell Dave.”
“That's no problem. I would have told Dave myself, but they've been keeping him pretty busy.”
Maybe she was wrong about the ethics, Faith thought.
Scott stood up, too. Really, he was breathtaking.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Fairchild,” he said, extending his hand.
She took it.
“Nice to meet you too, Scott, and say hello to Trishia for me. She is your girlfriend, isn't she?”
Faith looked at her watch. She had been gone almost an hour and had better hurry. Tom might be getting worried. On her way out she glanced into the smaller room and was getting into her car before the fact fully registered that the Moores' son, Robert Jr., had been sitting across from someone in a shadowy corner of the room. Now what was he doing home from college? As far
as she knew it wasn't vacation. Maybe he had stayed on for a day or so after Cindy's funeral.
That evening when she told Tom about her conversation with Scott Phelan, he was even more annoyed than she had thought he would be. He was in fact, very angry. He had been angry enough earlier when Faith, in a misguided bid for sympathy, told him about Dunne following her.
“Faith!” he said now as he strode up and down the living room setting off a cacophony of creaking floorboards. “Faith! I thought you were merely going to keep your ‘ears and eyes open.' That is a far cry from leaving your house in the middle of the night to tryst with a bunch of teenagers, ending up with a police escort home! And thank goodness he is keeping an eye on you, although what he must think of me snoring away while you are all over the landscape, Heaven knows. And now you go off to some shady diner to meet a strange man. Faith, I just can't believe you would put yourself in such danger!”
“Now, Tom, I wasn't in any danger. Okay, I was a little nervous driving back last night, but meeting someone at a public place—it is not shady and they have very good chowder—is not exactly tying myself to the railroad tracks.”
“And what if he had suggested you go examine the exact spot where he had seen Dave? You would have gone. I know you would have. You are the most outrageous combination of blind trust and curiosity of any woman I have ever known!”
“Stop shouting, Tom, you're going to wake the baby. And, how many trusting, curious women have you known? Please give me a little more credit. I do have some common sense. I would not have gone to the railroad tracks with Scott. Especially not at first.”
“Faith!”
It took a while, but eventually Tom calmed down and Faith was able to tell him exactly what Scott had said. Which started him up all over again.
“What does this guy look like anyway? I think he must have mesmerized you.”
“Honestly, Tom! He's just a kid. A little better than average looking, jeans, leather jacket. You know the type.”
“Yeah, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and Tom Cruise all rolled into one.”
“Tom, we're getting off the subject here. We have a witness. Whatever you may think of him. He saw Dave by the tracks at noon and will testify if he has to and I think he knows he has to. It's that he wants to come in through us and as part of Dave's case rather than through the police. He didn't say not to tell Dave's lawyer, only the police, and we can check with him tomorrow.”
But Scott was right. By the next day it wasn't necessary.
Faith was awakened early next morning by the sounds of an unusual amount of activity next door at the Millers. She got up and looked out the window.
“Tom! Tom! My God! Get dressed! There are a million police cars next door. Hurry!”
Tom pulled on his clothes in record time and sped over to the Millers. He almost collided with MacIsaac and Dunne, with Sam Miller between them. Faith, watching from the window, could not imagine what was going on. What could they possibly want with Sam? Tom got into the patrol car with them. Faith wasn't sure whether she should go over to Pix or wait to see if Tom called. Five minutes later the phone rang. It was Tom.
“Faith, it's absolutely insane. Sam is a suspect in
Cindy's murder! Evidently there are eyewitnesses who saw them together on Friday morning, quarreling. And some of the photos were of Sam. It seems he was having an affair with her.
And
they found a one-way ticket to Puerto Rico in his pocket for a flight tomorrow. You'd better get over to Pix.”
Faith for once in her life was absolutely speechless. Sam? Cindy? Who was going to be arrested next? Mr. Brown, the church's seventy-five-year-old sexton?
She got Benjamin ready quickly. She wasn't going to stop for breakfast, she was going right over to Pix. But as she opened her door, there was Pix on the doorstep, red-eyed and slightly crazy. They went into the kitchen where Pix immediately began to weep hysterically.
“Oh, Faith, I hope you don't mind. I didn't want the kids to see me like this. Of course they don't want to go to school, so I can't leave them long. What are we going to do?”
“Have something to eat first and then we'll try to figure it out.” It was Faith's credo. “I assume you have a lawyer, right?”
“Lawyers! Yes, we have a lawyer and he's on his way.” Pix was starting to hiccup, but it didn't lessen the emotional impact of her words, “Faith, this is all my fault!”
“Now don't tell me you were having an affair with Cindy, too,” said Faith, hoping to inject a little humor in the situation. She poured some coffee into two mugs, adding a liberal dose of brandy to Pix's. She cut some thick slices of cinnamon bread, buttered them, and sat down.
Pix raised her head from the table where she had collapsed. “Believe me, Faith, if it would have kept Sam from having one with her, I would have. The little slut. It makes me nauseous to think of it.”
She took a large swallow of coffee and continued. “I
knew Sam was having an affair and I figured I'd just wait it out. You know how hard he took turning forty. You were at the party.”
Faith remembered. The tight little smile and forced laughter Sam had displayed as he opened his “gifts”—bottles of Geritol,
Playboy
calendars, all singularly tasteless, in her opinion. Then there were all the jokes about getting it up—someone had even given him a small toy crane with a long pointless poem about how to use it and when. Somebody else had presented Pix with an elaborate gift certificate entitling her to trade him in for two twenties.
Sam got pretty drunk and went out the next week and bought a silver Porsche. He said it was his present to himself.
Pix seemed to be reading Faith's mind. “He bought the car and I knew something was going on, but he didn't want to talk about it. It looked ridiculous—our two cars in the driveway side by side—me the big clunky Land Rover, Sam the sleek Porsche. I tried to talk to him about it. After all, I had turned forty last year—very quietly.
“I knew the signs. I read books. Midlife crisis, all that, so I thought I'd try to change, too—bought a lot of lingerie and even tried some of the Total Woman stuff, you know getting rid of the kids and welcoming him home dressed in Saran Wrap and nothing else, but we just laughed too hard. I knew everything would be all right and decided I would just go on as always. Pretend that nothing was the matter. Sex was still good. I wasn't complaining and neither was he.”
Faith wondered if all minister's wives had to listen to this sort of confession, and tried to look mature and worldly, as if she had the wives of accused murderers sitting at her kitchen table every day, pouring out the most intimate details of their marriages.
“But if I had known it was Cindy, I would have killed her myself,” said Pix vehemently, “Sam is a baby. He was too innocent for her and she must have been driving him crazy. I knew he was tense, but he said it was work. I knew it wasn't all work. There were a lot of unexplained late nights. It wasn't something I liked, but there it was.”
Faith reached over and took her hand. Pix gave it a squeeze and sat up straight.
“Faith, marriage is taking turns,” she said somewhat didactically. She was on her second mug of coffee cum brandy and her voice was assuming the authoritative tone Faith thought she herself should have. Who was supposed to be comforting whom?
“You go through so many stages. When the kids were little and driving me crazy, Sam would come home and pitch in with the wash or whatever. He was strong for me. Now it's my turn to be strong for him. I certainly wasn't going to throw a perfectly good marriage out the window because he was feeling middle-aged and needed some reassurance. Remember that, Faith. Tom may not have an affair” (better not, thought Faith) “but there will be something, sometime.”
Pix started to cry again. This time quietly and that was somehow more desperate than her earlier wails. The anger was gone and the fear was taking hold.
“I've got to get back to the kids and I've got to find out what's going on. You've been a darling, Faith.”
Faith gave her a hug at the door.
“Just remember, Pix, Tom and I are here for you any time of day or night—and for the kids, too. Whatever happens, just remember that. We're on your side.” Faith felt rather proud of this speech. It sounded like something a minister's wife should say. Then Pix took the wind right out of her sails; in fact, she capsized the craft.
“Faith! You think Sam is guilty!” She looked stunned.
“Of course I don't!” said Faith immediately, realizing that in the back of her mind in fact she had believed Sam had killed Cindy in some crazed moment. She was as shocked at herself as Pix was. This was Sam and just because Dave would be off the hook now was no reason to think her obviously innocent neighbor, friend, and fellow parishioner was guilty. It looked as if she wasn't going to be able to abandon her investigation yet.
“Pix! You must believe me! I'm as sure of Sam's innocence as I am, well—of yours or mine!”
Pix looked at her in the eye. “That's better,” she said, then added, “but I wouldn't be so sure of mine if I were you.”
Faith gasped.
“Just testing,” Pix said wickedly.
Faith closed the door and wondered if all her parish duties would end up making her feel like she'd just had one of her mother's talking tos. In any case, she was not sure what she had done for Pix, though Pix had certainly opened
her
eyes on a few things. At least Faith had cheered her up; the Pix who left was quite different from the one who arrived. But then it might have been the brandy. Now the main thing to do was find out what sort of case the police had against Sam. She doubted that John Dunne would figuratively throw the cuffs on someone without pretty solid evidence.
Tom called again at noon. The police were being terrifically considerate. MacIsaac was letting him stay with Sam and Dunne had just gone out to get them all some meatball subs to eat. Faith almost gagged. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.
Dave had been released and was home sleeping. He had been tearfully relieved before discovering that Sam
had been arrested, then he had burst out in an angry denunciation of Cindy. Nobody stopped him.
Before he got off the phone, Tom told Faith that just after they had arrived at the station Sam had confessed that Cindy, parish Young People's President and former record holder for perfect attendance at Sunday School, had been blackmailing him for several months.
And they call New York “Sin City,” Faith thought as she hung up.
 
What had started out as a moment of sweet passion had rapidly turned into a nightmare of lust and a web of deceit for Sam. At least this is the way he thought of it. Faith thought it was an apt but harsh description when she had pieced the whole story together with what she learned from Pix, what Sam told Tom, and even a few details from Charley MacIsaac who couldn't resist a snide comment about people who drove around in highly visible cars.
Sam had offered to drive Cindy home after church one sunny June Sunday when she had complained of a sore ankle. Somehow the silver Porsche had ended up on one of the birch-lined dirt roads near town conservation land and somehow before too long Cindy and Sam were lying under the silver green leaves.
Poor Cindy, thought Sam. She had had a rough time of it, losing her parents so young, and face it, Patricia and Robert were a bit stiff. Not like him. She told him she could talk to him, really talk to him, and thanked him with touching humility for what she hinted was the sublime sexual experience of her life.
Sam didn't smoke, but he had wanted a cigarette as he lay nestled in the ferns with Cindy's lovely head resting on his shoulder, her long dark hair spread down his chest entwined in the dark hair there—sure there were a few gray ones coming in, but that's what maturity meant.
She made him feel seasoned, like fine-grained oak, not old. Hell, not old at all.
By the next week he knew he was hooked. He couldn't stop thinking about her—the sunlight, the smells, the sex. But he didn't call. She was a kid, or if not exactly a kid, she certainly was engaged to be married, and to someone Sam liked very much. Dave had been their babysitter and was like a member of the family.
He pushed the whole thing from his mind and began to go up more often to the house in Maine. Each June as soon as school was over, Pix packed up the kids and the Land Rover and took off for their cottage on Penobscot Bay, where she spent the summer blissfully making beach plum jelly and raising money for the local ambulance corps.
One Friday night in early July, when he went into the garage loaded with his L.L. Bean suitcase plus all the food Pix couldn't find on the island, there was Cindy in a halter top, shorts, and not much else sitting in the front seat of the car waiting for him.
He stopped going to Maine as frequently, or rather he went, but it was further south, to motels in Old Orchard Beach and Ogunquit where they would make love feverishly, then eat lobster on the docks. He didn't know whether he was happy or not about the way things were going, but he knew he was alive. He also didn't know that while he slept Cindy had set the timer on her camera, artfully draped herself around him, and taken several shots which she neatly labeled with his initials, the date, and name of the motel.
Toward the end of July, Cindy changed abruptly. Suddenly she began to make jokes. She started to call him “my old codger” and “Father Time,” at first affectionately and then less so. When he was tired, she did not attempt to hide her annoyance. He was no longer the partner in control, the teacher, the wise veteran. He was
the supplicant, the controlled. She would cancel dates at the last minute or demand to go back early. He wanted to end things, but for a long time could not bring himself to do it. The memory of the early days was still fresh and Pix was away. Cindy was company, if increasingly bad company.
In early August he decided his nerves could not take it anymore. He was not cut out to cheat on his wife and he had intended all along to go to the island for two weeks. It was a logical time to break things off once and for all.
But Cindy had no intention of breaking things off. She was getting a bit tired of him, she told him, but it was pleasant to have an older man take her to dinner occasionally and as for the sex, she liked to keep her hand in, so to speak. She had laughed mockingly at him. He was furious and his intentions of letting her down gently vanished. So did her lightly amused manner. After he had lost his temper and let her know just what a conniving bitch she was, she had told him in a few pithy sentences that if he ever tried to break off with her, Pix would know everything. Cindy had kept a record of the names and dates of every place they had gone. She said she had taken the carbons from the motels and places they ate on occasions when he was supposed to be out of town on client's business. “And I've got more than carbons on you, something more negative, let's say,” she had threatened. She would also make sure his partners knew. Not that they would care much, but he would look like a fool, she said, “Which of course is exactly what you are, Mr. Goodwrench.”
She had taunted him all fall, even phoning the house. Thursday afternoon she had called his office demanding that he take her to dinner. He called Pix with a feeble excuse and they had driven to Hawthorne-by-the-Sea. Sam had a theory that in big restaurants you were more
anonymous, except in this one he forgot about the loudspeaker system they used when your table was ready. It had never occurred to him at any time with Cindy to use an alias. It would have been no use anyway, he realized later. She would just have had more to blackmail him over.

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