The Body In The Bog (3 page)

It was after ten o'clock when Faith remembered to go into the coat closet to retrieve the piece of paper from her pocket that Millicent had thrust at her the night before. Mornings had a way of slipping out from under Faith, despite the fact that the Fairchilds, particularly the children, were all up and about at an ungodly hour. First, Amy would appear, her sleeper bulging with what Faith knew was a sodden night diaper. Tousled, smiling, cute as a button, their daughter at this moment held little charm for her parents and their first words of the day tended to be, “I did it yesterday; it's your turn.” It had been Faith's turn this morning and returning to snatch a few more minutes in the cozy warmth of bed, she had not been surprised to find Ben with roughly forty of his stuffed animals occupying her space. Tom was sound asleep.

“Mommy!” he cried in delight. “Can we have waffles for breakfast?” Thoroughly awake now, “Mommy” managed a weak smile. Food. At least he had his priorities straight.

Breakfast over, Tom out the door to the church office, kids dressed and deposited at school and play group—Faith reminded herself it was her turn Monday, another task that had been known to slip her mind—she stood still and savored the moment. The house was quiet. She could have a peaceful cup of coffee. She could read the newspaper. She could phone a friend. Instead, she went to the closet.

She'd worn her pale gray shearling—a Christmas gift from Tom. The night air had been cold and she was as tired as everyone else in Aleford of bulky down parkas. The House of Bauer and Bean tailoring left much to be desired on Faith's part. Its resulting fashion statement looked more like the House of Michelin. She'd tried to get through her first winter in something less warm and more chic, but she had given in around January, before doing permanent damage to her circulatory system.

The paper she retrieved was bright orange. Its message was spelled out in a variety of eye-catching fonts, complete with shadowing and clip art. What did people do before the advent of computers, Faith wondered, when mere words had to convey one's passion? She regarded Millicent's work. It had all the subtlety of a punch between the eyes.

You couldn't help but admire the woman. As incendiary literature, the broadside was pithy. No names were named, yet Millicent's John Hancock was all over it—as was her phone number. She and several other diehards still used the exchange's full name rather than simply the letters
IN
or the numbers 46. Faith knew New Yorkers like this—stubbornly clinging to Algonquin and Murray Hill. Millicent also hadn't named Joey Madsen, but the “greedy land gobbler” appellation, identifiable to all, was bound to infuriate him. For vastly different reasons, each of them was the self-proclaimed guardian of Aleford: Ale
ford's quality of life. Whatever that meant. Faith noticed whenever people used the term, it tended to mean the quality of their own particular lives—backyards, streets, wallets—and not necessarily their neighbors', next-door or global.

Still, she'd see if Samantha Miller could baby-sit. Tom wouldn't want to miss the meeting, and Faith had already decided to become a charter member. Fonts or no fonts, POW! had a point. The bog
was
a wonderful place.

Plus, the access road would most assuredly wipe out the parsonage lilac hedge.

 

An hour later, Faith turned from her recipe notebooks.
Have Faith
was catering a large dinner party on the “real” Patriots' Day, Friday, April 19, and she had been instructed by the hostess to prepare traditional New England favorites. Favorites of whom? had been on the tip of Faith's tongue, but she bit it and was now searching through her files to find palatable fare. A region best known for baked beans, boiled dinners, and scrod was not exactly a culinary paradise on a par, say, with Provence, Tuscany, or New Orleans.

Baked beans—what could she do with them? Sweeten them with the thick grade B maple syrup she preferred for its strong flavor? She'd give New England maple syrup. Also Maine lobster.

Or should she spice up the beans with a kind of mustardy barbecue-type sauce? The dinner was to be a buffet, and she'd already decided to serve her ver
sion of Yankee pot roast as the main course. Desserts. She sighed. They no doubt expected Indian pudding, a concoction that always tasted like porridge to Faith no matter how much vanilla ice cream she heaped on top. Besides, it should probably be called Native American pudding, and someone at the party was bound to object. Fortunately, Tom, partial to everything else springing from the rockbound soil of his birth, did not care for it. “Cornmeal does not leap to mind when dessert is mentioned,” he'd observed. “Chocolate does.” Faith had never heard of any New England chocolate desserts. It was time to get out her venerable 1915 Fannie Farmer, a volume she normally reserved for light reading in bed due to its wonderful photographic illustrations—a doily for every dish—and the recipes. She never tired of reading about things like Syracuse Five o' clock Tea (five o' clock tea sweetened with red or white rock candy—was Syracuse known for its sweet tooth?), Mock Sausages with Fried Apple Rings (the sausages were made of lima beans), and Lobster Boats (complete with instructions for sails made of rice paper). Then there were Little Brahmins—cooked rice flavored with catsup, shaped into the form of chickens, crumbed, and deep-fried. The photograph showed them nestled on a bed of parsley. One is facing in the opposite direction from the rest, the poultry equivalent of a black sheep, or an obscure reference to J. P. Marquand? Faith also ardently subscribed to Mrs. Farmer's introductory quotation: “We grow like what we eat; Bad food depresses, good food
exalts us like an inspiration.” Usage aside, Faith found comfort in the words and had suggested more than once to Pix, who did things like this, that an embroidered hanging for the Fairchild kitchen would not be ill received. Fannie would have something Faith could use for dessert.

She'd been completely concentrating on her work, or so she thought, but she hadn't accomplished much and was feeling out of sorts. There really wasn't any reason why she should be. Her life was going well. Second children were supposed to be more easygoing than firsts, although Faith had greeted this remark with the same skepticism she'd rightly reserved for second deliveries being easier. But this maxim was proving true. Amy slept through the night—technically, it
was
morning when she got up and out—as opposed to Ben. He had nearly sent them round the bend with his nocturnal wanderings once he'd mastered the parent-defying art of climbing out of the crib.

Amy had also virtually toilet-trained herself, needing only the diaper at night, and was thereby saving them enough money in Huggies so that college tuition was once more a possibility. She had an interesting and sunny temperament, although, as Ben had been at the same age, she was a child of few words—approximately fifteen at the moment. Faith attributed this to her own parental failure to offer adequate stimulation. She could read to her children endlessly, but talking to someone who did not talk back or replied with one word, occasionally two, as in “Want Daddy,” was not her idea of stimulating conversation.
She firmly classified it with playing most games. Happily, Tom was good at that and could spend hours spinning spinners and moving brightly colored pieces about in circles with Ben. Watching them, Faith had had to concede that there are some things that passeth all understanding.

No, it was not her family. Like Amy, Ben was as easy as a child could be, which is to say he had the capacity to consume most of the oxygen in the room yet was willing to share when reminded. As for Tom, husbands are never easy, but she loved him very much and that went a long way, especially when the seat was left up in the middle of the night.

The scene with Miss Lora flashed in front of her. What would she do if Tom really did have an affair? Never mind the logistics. He barely had time to brush his teeth, what with parish duties and family life. She'd warned him once when Amy's bout with colic coincided with Ben's discovery of how to release the car's emergency brake that if they ever divorced, he'd have to take the kids, any pets they might acquire, as well as the cottage in Maine. If she was getting out, she wanted
out.
He'd laughed, but not heartily. He knew she meant it.

But she had been jealous when she'd seen another woman in Tom's arms. And Lora Deane was not exactly a threat. When Faith had dropped Ben off this morning, the teacher had a voluminous smock over what appeared to be adult-sized Osh-Kosh overalls and an old turtleneck. No, Faith wasn't seriously worried about Tom and any possible dalliance along
Sesame Street. She was, however, worried about Lora herself.

Stalked, being harmed, or even being murdered by an ex turned up in the news every day. She hoped that Lora really was going to speak to her half sister immediately. If Joey was eliminated, as Faith suspected he would be, then they could turn their attention to Brad Hallowell before it was too late. It might make sense to find out more about him now. Faith remembered she'd said as much to Lora last night.

Brad had been at the selectmen's meeting, standing in the back of the room. Faith had wondered what he was doing there. Joey's presentation had been the third and last item on the agenda. Brad had certainly not come to hear the Minuteman Café's request for permission to change the color of its awning from green to maroon when it ordered a new one. Nor would he have been interested in Norma Parkington's spirited reading of the most recent letter from Aleford's sister city in Iceland, Hafnarfjördur. So far, Hafnarfjördur officials had been to Aleford, but Town Meeting systematically voted down a request for funds for a similar junket by Aleford officials. Said officials did not seem to mind much, although, as Millicent tartly observed, if Aleford were twinned with Paris, France, they'd find the money. She was of the belief that an exchange meant an exchange and Aleford should return the call, albeit at said officials' personal expense.

Brad must have been at the meeting to hear Joey, but didn't the young man have better, more interesting
things to do with his time? Faith certainly had had at his age, which, after all, wasn't that long ago. She closed her recipe books and decided to talk to Pix. Pix had grown up in Aleford and was seemingly born with all ten of her capable fingers in various town pies. Millicent might know who everybody in town was, and their mothers and fathers before them, but Pix knew what they were doing. Faith went to the phone.

“Faith! I'm so glad you called. I was about to call you. Can you come over for a quick cup of coffee? I know you have to pick up the kids soon.”

“I'd love to—and I have something to ask you, too.” Faith wanted to be sure she got equal time. Pix might be her dearest friend, but she could exhibit a single-minded sense of purpose that sometimes prevented getting a word in edgewise.

When Faith arrived at the Millers' doorstep, it appeared that today might be one of those days. Pix, normally unflappable, was in a quandary about not one but two of her children. The oldest, Mark, had been safely launched, a college sophomore majoring in political science, with his sights set on Washington. This did cause Pix an occasional twinge. “You don't think he wants to be president, do you?” she'd asked Faith once. “I would make such a dreadful campaigner. All those speeches and dinners. I don't know how Rose Kennedy ever did it.” Pix had no doubt that if Mark did aspire to the Oval Office, it was his for the asking. No, today Pix was not worried about finding a pair of pumps that matched her purse in a wardrobe consisting mainly of clogs and denim wraparound
skirts. It was Samantha, a high school senior, and Danny, a seventh grader, who were on her mind today.

The Millers' kitchen had been remodeled when they moved into the Federal brick house many years ago. The spacious room was geared more to the family's various pursuits than to food preparation. Faith correctly assumed the stove, refrigerator, and so on were categorized more as “things that go in a kitchen” than “things we want to use.” There was plenty of room to sit and chat—if you removed the hockey skates or quilt Pix was piecing. Pix now worked part-time for Faith, keeping the books and handling the ordering. She had agreed to this employment with the strict understanding that she would not be expected to do any food preparation whatsoever. “I could possibly peel carrots or potatoes,” she'd said, “but then I might do them wrong.” Pix's kitchen cabinets tended to be stocked with things that had the word
Helper
in the title. Yet the house always smelled of freshly baked bread—and, of course, coffee. The coffee, Faith could see. The bread smell mystified her. Pix offered her a steaming mug, pretty much a reflex action, cleared a pile of magazines she'd been meaning to read since last year, and the two of them sunk into the comfortable old sofa that overlooked the yard. One of the dogs immediately lumbered over to join them. Pix made more room.

Faith correctly guessed that any conversation about Samantha must involve college. She was right.