In the end, Alice decided to go straight to the source. She had learned that there was a time to be cagey and there was a time to be direct. Her instinct told her that this was a time to be direct.
The day after Old Home Day was a Sunday, clear and sparkling, the thunderstorm and the hours of rain that followed having cleaned everything out so that it felt more like spring than summer. At church, the Reverend Call talked to the congregation about the concept of homecoming. He quoted Robert Frost and he welcomed those who were returning to Bethany for the week. Alice glanced at the Falconers, sitting three across in their second-row pew. Barbara had seemed to be enjoying herself yesterday, until the incident with Victor Weber, that was, but Alice knew that the absences of Greg Falconer and Barbara’s fiancé, Tony Lindsey, must be weighing heavily on her and her parents’ minds, especially with President Johnson’s recent speech about the need for increased troops.
She was pleased to see that the congregation responded warmly to the sermon. The Reverend Call had gone down to Alabama in March and when he returned, he could not stop talking about what he had seen in Selma. There had been whispers that the multiple sermons on the subject were … a bit much. Alice had understood why he could not let it go; he had known the ministers beaten there, had known the minister killed by the white mob. She had told him to speak what was on his mind, that she would answer the whispers. She had only had to speak sharply to two members of the congregation, in the end.
When the service was over, she did not linger long, saying a few quick hellos and then returning home to change clothes.
The Gerharts lived along Church Street, in a small section of recently built Cape Cod–style homes, each with a driveway, garage, and small back lawn. The development had been the brainchild of Dick Byrnes and, just as Dick had promised, the small houses had appealed to young families and also to couples who had sold their farms or wanted a smaller house in their old age.
Alice knocked on the door and was pleased when Richie came around the side of the house from the garage, wiping his hands with a rag soaked in turpentine. She looked past him to see a sawhorse set up next to the garage, with a door balanced against it. He was painting.
“Mrs. Bellows?” He looked confused. He knew Alice, of course, from the store, but they were not on social terms and Alice had never been particularly friendly with Richie’s parents.
“Richie,” she said. “I’m so sorry to bother you. But I need to ask you something. I know that you’ve had some trouble at the store. And I know that Lizzie’s father has accused you of stealing. I don’t think you’d do something like that and, well, you know about these fires, don’t you?” He nodded morosely. “I’m sure you can feel it too. Something isn’t right in Bethany. And we need to get to the bottom of it. If you didn’t steal those cartridges, well, then someone else did. I want to find out who it was.”
She watched his face as he took in what she was saying. Richie was a quiet soul, but his emotions showed on his face. What Alice saw there was raw hope. He had thought his case was beyond redemption and she had offered him a tiny sliver of possibility that it wasn’t. But then he considered another moment and she saw his face fall again.
“I wish I knew who took ’em,” he said quietly, the smell of the turpentine rising in the air around him. “It surely wasn’t me, Mrs. Bellows! I swear it. But I didn’t see anything or anyone and…” He trailed off.
“And…?” Alice asked after a minute.
“Well, I had gone into the back, even though Bob told me to stay out behind the counter, keeping an eye on things.”
“So someone could have come in while you were in the back,” she offered. “Why didn’t you tell Bob that?”
He looked down at the ground. “I was embarrassed, Mrs. Bellows.”
Alice tried to make her voice gentle, cajoling, as though she were speaking to a small child. “What were you doing, Richie? What were you doing in the back that you didn’t want to tell Bob about it?”
He struggled with himself and then he shook his head sadly and said, “I’m too embarrassed to tell you, Mrs. Bellows.” Alice tried not to show her surprise. What could it be? Pornography? An affair with someone who had agreed to meet him at the store? Neither seemed quite possible.
“Richie, we all have our little secrets, don’t we? I promise I will be very discreet. But this is bigger than you and me, you know. Mr. Weber is dead and that camp belonging to the people from Boston has been burned down and whoever did it might also be the person who took the cartridges.”
He struggled some more and then, wordlessly, he reached into his pocket and came out with a small black box. He handed it to Alice and when she saw the words printed on the outside, she understood what she had gotten wrong. It had not been Drake Outfitters that had been the purpose of Richie’s trip to Woodstock. It had been Pendergast Jewelers.
“I was gonna give it to Lizzie that night,” he said. “I hid it in the office. I was so worried about losing it, though, that I kept going back to check on it and it must have been … it must have been one of those times I was checking that they were taken.”
Alice breathed out. Thank goodness it wasn’t pornography or an affair. “Why didn’t you explain to Bob?”
Richie took the box back from her. “I wanted to ask Lizzie first, before I talked to Bob. It seemed like what she’d want me to do. Lizzie … she has her own mind, Mrs. Bellows. I like that about her, even if some don’t. And if I mentioned it to Bob and she found out later…”
Alice saw it. “He might have ruined the surprise and Lizzie might have been mad he knew before she did?”
“That’s right. I thought that it would blow over. I thought Lizzie would stick up for me and Bob would realize that I’d … that I’d never do something like that. But…” Poor Richie looked around at his parents’ yard, perplexed by how everything had come apart. “I tried to take the ring back last week but I couldn’t do it, Mrs. Bellows. I want to marry Lizzie. I really do. I just…”
“Richie,” Alice said. “I’m going to help you, but I need you to think very hard. You said you didn’t see anyone who might have taken the cartridges, but did you see anyone who you are sure didn’t take them, if you see what I mean?”
He furrowed his eyebrows. “Someone who didn’t take them?”
She would have to spell it out. “Someone who might have been a witness.”
“Oh, yes, well, I saw the Tewksburys walk past, but they didn’t come in, and then Mr. Williamson came to get his papers, and Barbara Falconer came in and bought some meat for their bitch that’s had the puppies. And Mrs. Harper came too. I remember because she didn’t look well and I said something to Lizzie about it. That was before Bob discovered the cartridges were missing.”
“Thank you, Richie,” Alice told him. “I’m going to go and talk to Mrs. Harper. I hope we’ll have news soon.”
Alice found Mary on the porch, sitting with a bowl of green pole beans. She was staring into the distance and absentmindedly snapping the ends of the beans. When she saw Alice, she put the bowl down and motioned her up onto the porch. Alice saw a shadow of pain sweep across her face. The cancer was quite far along then. Alice knew that look and she knew that Mary was likely near the end.
“Hello, Alice,” Mary said. “It’s funny, I was just thinking about you and now here you are.”
Alice took one of Mary’s thin hands in hers and squeezed it warmly. “I hear you’ve been up to Burlington, Mary. I stopped by the other day and Genevra told me. I’m so sorry you’re not feeling well.”
Mary smiled. “I am too, but it’s to be expected, isn’t it, things coming to a close at my age. I’ve been lucky, Alice. In so many ways.”
The sun was angled perfectly, shining onto the porch so that it was warm, but not too hot. Mary had a handsome crop of blue and violet morning glories twining along the porch railings and the leaves provided ample shade. It was the perfect time for a good long chat. Alice sat down next to Mary and inquired after her grandchildren. She had remembered correctly that there were now a few great-grandchildren and Mary reeled off their names and ages and accomplishments. Alice always felt slightly uncomfortable at these recitations of the successes of people’s offspring. It seemed to her that the reciter’s pride was based entirely on the genetic connection they had with the child. She supposed people felt responsible for their children’s accomplishments, though in her experience, they rarely claimed their children’s failures. Alice didn’t understand it, but she knew to make the right sounds and gestures and she could see how much pleasure it gave Mary to talk about her family. It was her legacy. It was what she would leave behind.
What will I leave behind? Alice thought to herself and then she let that go, because it was not something she wanted to think too much about.
Finally, Mary said, “Were you just passing?” with a raised eyebrow.
“You know me too well,” Alice replied. “I wanted to ask you something. I know you often do your shopping around midday. There was a bit of an incident at the store a couple of weeks ago. Something went missing. I suspect that this missing item is the source of the tension in the store, and between Lizzie and her father. You may have picked up on it. Have you seen anything around town that might shed some light on this situation, Mary?”
Snap. Mary dropped a topped and tailed bean into the bowl. Her hands went silent while she thought. “Well,” she said finally. “There was the man with the jacket.”
Alice waited. She didn’t need to prompt Mary. Mary was just old and a bit slow to organize her thoughts. She would get there.
“I saw him for the first time not long after the Fourth of July,” she said. “He isn’t local. I assumed he was a tourist or a college student out for a drive, but then I saw him again, right around the time you say this incident in the store occurred. He was young, but his clothes were quite, well, shabby and dirty. He had a beard and he had not had a bath. What made me notice him, however, was his jacket. It was hot and he was wearing a jacket. That seemed strange to me. But then I never saw him again so I assumed he was staying in town but had gone back to wherever he came from.”
“Mary, the new state police detective, Mr. Warren, is looking for a man who might have set the fires up on Agony Hill. Do you think this could be the same man?”
Mary turned to look at Alice, a shocked expression on her face. “I didn’t think of that, because in my mind he had gone, you see. I sort of … closed him off. I suppose that could be the man, though where was he all this time?”
Alice considered that. “Mary, do you think you might be able to identify this man, if you saw him again?”
Mary grinned. “Not his face, but I think I could identify his jacket if I saw it. It was an old buffalo plaid hunting jacket, green and black, just like the one Willy wore to deer camp. It made me think of Willy is why I noticed the man, I think. And because it seemed so strange to wear that coat in July. I would recognize that coat.”
Alice thanked her and walked slowly back toward the green. That coat was indeed suspicious, she thought to herself. The only reason to wear a jacket like that on a hot day was that you needed a place to hide something.
Something like eight boxes of rifle cartridges, Alice thought.